Th(e ACADeMT seRies OF 




Selected Poems 

PoPE'GRAY'GOLDSMITH 



EDITED BY 



P R 




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'I 



ALLYN AND BACO 



SECONn ^OPY, 
1899. 




LIBRARY OF CONGRESS. 




Chap...' _. .! (^opyrigh t/Xo.. 
Shelf...__.V4/3 



UNITED STATES OF AMERICA. 



€\}e ScaljEmg Scries of ISngltsi) Classics 

Pope, Gray, Goldsmith 
selected poems 

Essay on Criticism 

Elegy written in a Country Churchyard 

The Progress of Poesy 

The Traveller 
The Deserted Village 

EDITED BY 

GEORGE A. WATROUS, A.M. 

UTICA FREE ACADEMY, UTICA, NEW YORK 



ALLYN AND BACON 

Boston antj Cfjicago 



38797 



COPYKIGHT, 1S99, BY 
GEOKGE A. WATEOUS. 



7.\^ 



TWacrois! , ,iic^-,y 



SO. 




J. S. Cushin;; & Co. — Berwick & Smith 
Norwood Mass. U.S.A. 






PREFACE. 

The poems in this volume of the Academy Series are 
chosen for the third year of an academy course. All except 
TJie Progress of Poesy and The Traveller are prescribed 
in the New York State Regents' course. It is believed that 
the added poems will materially assist the student to a 
fuller sympathy with the spirit of the respective authors 
and to a clearer comprehension of their time. The Travel- 
ler and The Deserted Village are certainly companion poems 
and should be studied together. The Elegy, with all its 
simplicity and beauty, does not represent Gray, for it merely 
indicates a change of attitude which appears fully devel- 
oped in The Progress of Poesy. The nature of the poems 
and the relation of the authors to the development of our 
literature make possible the compilation here offered. The 
student, it is hoped, may be helped by having in this small 
compass the five chief poems of the eighteenth century. 

G. A. W. 

Utica, N.Y., 
May, 1899. 



Ill 



CONTENTS. 

TEXT: 

PAGB 

Essay on Criticism 3 

Elegy written in a Country Churchyard ... 29 

The Progress of Poesy 34 

The Traveller 41 

The Deserted Village 55 

SKETCH OF POPE 69 

Notes on the Essay on Criticism 77 

SKETCH OF GRAY 97 

Notes on the Elegy written in a Country Churchyard 102 

Notes on The Progress of Poesy 108 

SKETCH OF GOLDSMITH 115 

Notes on The Traveller 119 

Notes on The Deserted Village 127 



V 



ALEXANDER POPE. 

AN ESSAY ON CRITICISM. 



AN ESSAY ON CRITICISM. 



I. 

Introduction : — That 'tis as great a fault to judge ill as to write ill, 
and a more dangerous one to the public, v. 1. That a true taste is 
as rare to be found as a true genius, vv. 9 to 18. That most men 
are born with some taste, but spoiled by false education, vv. 19 to 25. 

The multitude of critics, and causes of them, vv. 26 to 45. That 
we are to study our own taste, and know the limits of it, vv. 46 to 67. 

Nature the best guide of judgment, vv. 68 to 87. Improved by 
art and rules, which are but methodized nature, v. 88. 

Eules derived from the practice of the ancient poets, vv. id to 110. 
That therefore the ancients are necessary to be studied, by a critic, 
particularly Homer and Virgil, vv. 120 to 138. 

Of licenses, and the use of them by the ancients, vv. 140 to 180. 
Reverence due to the ancients, and praise of them, vv. 181, etc. 

'Tis hard to say, if greater want of skill 

Appear in writing or in judging ill ; 

But, of the two, less dangerous is the offence 

To tire our patience, than mislead our sense. 

Some few in that, but numbers err in this, 5 

Ten censure wrong for one who writes amiss ; 

A fool might once himself alone expose, 

Now one in verse makes many more in prose. 

'Tis with our judgments as our watches, none 
Go just alike, yet each believes his o\vn. 10 

3 



POPE. 

In poets as true genius is but rare, 

True taste as seldom is the critic's share ; 

Both must alike from Heaven derive their light, 

These born to judge, as well as those to write. 

Let such teach others who themselves excel, 15 

And censure freely who have written well. 

Authors are partial to their wit, 'tis true, 

But are not critics to their judgment, toa? 

Yet if we look more closely, we shall find 
Most have the seeds of judgment in their mind : 20 

Nature affords at least a glimmering light ; 
The lines, though touched but faintly, are drawn right. 
But as the slightest sketch, if justly traced, 
Is by ill-coloring but the more disgraced. 
So by false learning is good sense defaced : 25 

Some are bewildered in the maze of schools. 
And some made coxcombs nature meant but fools. 
In search of wit these lose their common sense, 
And then turn critics in their own defence : 
Each burns alike, who can, or cannot write, 30 

Or with a rival's, or an eunuch's spite. 
All fools have still an itching to deride, 
And fain would be upon the laughing side. 
If Msevius scribble in Apollo's spite, 
There are who judge still worse than he can write. 35 

Some have at first for wits, then poets, past. 
Turned critics next, and proved plain fools at last. 
Some neither can for wits nor critics pass. 
As heavy mules are neither horse nor ass. 
Those half-learned witlings, numerous in our isle, 40 

As half -formed insects on the banks of Nile ; 
Unfinished things, one knows not what to call, 
Their generation's so equivocal : 



ESSAY ON CRITICISM. 5 

To tell 'em, would a hundred tongues require, 

Or one vain wit's, that might a hundred tire. 45 

But you who seek to give and merit fame. 
And justly bear a critic's noble name, 
Be sure yourself and your own reach to know, 
How far your genius, taste, and learning go ; 
Launch not beyond your depth, but be discreet, 50 

And mark that point where sense and dulness meet. 

Nature to all things fixed the limit fit. 
And wisely curbed proud man's pretending wit. 
As on the land while here the ocean gains, 
In other parts it leaves wide sandy plains ; 55 

Thus in the soul while memory prevails, 
The solid power of understanding fails ; 
Where beams of warm imagination play. 
The memory's soft figures melt away. 
One science only will one genius fit ; 60 

So vast is art, so narrow human wit : 
Not only bounded to peculiar arts. 
But oft in those confined to single parts. 
Like kings we lose the conquests gained before. 
By vain ambition still to make them more ; 65 

Each might his several province well command, 
Would all but stoop to what they understand. 

First follow nature, and your judgment frame 
By her just standard, Avhich is still the same : 
Unerring nature, still divinely bright, 70 

One clear, unchanged, and universal light. 
Life, force, and beauty, must to all impart. 
At once the source, and end, and test of art. 
Art from that fund each just supply provides, 
Works without show, and without pomp presides : 75 

In some fair body thus the informing soul 



6 POPE. 

Witli spirits feeds, with vigor fills the whole, 

Each niotion guides, and every nerve sustains ; 

Itself unseen, but in the effects, remains. 

Some, to whom Heaven in wit has been profuse, 80 

Want as much more, to turn it to its use ; 

For wit and judgment often are at strife. 

Though meant each other's aid, like man and wife. 

'Tis more to guide, than spur the Muse's steed ; 

Restrain his fury, then provoke his speed; 85 

The winged courser, like a generous horse. 

Shows most true metal when you check his course. 

Those rules of old discovered, not devised, 
Are nature still, but nature methodized ; 
Nature, like liberty, is but restrained 90 

By the same laws which first herself ordained. 

Hear how learned Greece her useful rules indites. 
When to repress, and when indulge our flights : 
High on Parnassus' top her sons she showed, 
And pointed out those arduous paths they trod ; 95 

Held from afar, aloft, the immortal prize. 
And urged the rest by equal steps to rise. 
Just precepts thus from great examples given. 
She drew from them what they derived from Heaven. 
The generous critic fanned the poet's fire, 100 

And taught the world with reason to admire. 
Then Criticism the Muse's handmaid proved. 
To dress her charms, and make her more beloved: 
But following wits from that intention strayed. 
Who could not win the mistress, wooed the maid ; 105 

Against the poets their own arms they turned. 
Sure to hate most the men from whom they learned. 
So modern 'pothecaries, taught the art 
By doctor's bills to ];)lay the doctor's part. 



ESSAY ON CRITICISM. 7 

Bold in the practice of mistaken rules, , 110 

Prescribe, apply, and call their masters fools. 

Some on the leaves of ancient authors prey, 

Nor time nor moths e'er spoiled so much as they. 

Some dryly plain, without invention's aid. 

Write dull receipts how poems may be made. 115 

These leave the sense, their learning to display, 

And those explain the meaning quite away. 

You then whose judgment the right course would steer, 
Know well each ancient's proper character ; 
His fable, subject, scope in every page ; 120 

Religion, country, genius of his age : 
Without all these at once before your eyes, 
Cavil you may, but never criticise. 
Be Homer's works your study and delight, 
Read them by day, and meditate by night ; 125 

Thence form your judgment, thence your maxims bring. 
And trace the Muses upward to their spring. 
Still with itself compared, his text peruse; 
And let your comment be the Mantuan Muse. 

When first young Maro in his boundless mind 130 

A work to outlast immortal Rome designed, 
Perhaps he seemed above the critic's law, 
And but from nature's fountains scorned to draw: 
But when to examine every part he came, 
Nature and Homer were, he found, the same. 135 

Convinced, amazed, he checks the bold design ; 
And rules as strict his labored work confine, 
As if the Stagirite o'erlooked each line. 
Learn hence for ancient rules a just esteem ; 
To copy nature is to copy them. 140 

Some beauties yet no precepts can declare, 
For there's a happiness as well as care. 



8 POPE. 

Music resembles poetry, in each 

Are nameless graces vvhicli no methods teach, 

And which a master-hand alone can reach. 145 

If, where the rules not far enough extend 

(Since rules were made but to promote their end). 

Some lucky license answer to the full 

The intent proposed, that license is a rule. 

Thus Pegasus, a nearer way to take, 150 

May boldly deviate from the common track ; 

From vulgar bounds with brave disorder part. 

And snatch a grace beyond the reach of art, 

Which, without passing through the judgment, gains 

The heart, and all its end at once attains. 155 

In prospects thus, some objects please our eyes. 

Which out of nature's common order rise. 

The shapeless rock, or hanging precipice. 

Great wits sometimes may gloriously offend, 

And rise to faults true critics dare not mend. 160 

But though the ancients thus their rules invade 

(As kings dispense with laws themselves have made). 

Moderns, beware ! or if you must offend 

Against the precept, ne'er transgress its end; 

Let it be seldom, and compelled by need ; 165 

And have, at least, their precedent to plead. 

The critic else proceeds without remorse. 

Seizes your fame, and puts his laws in force. 

I know they are, to whose presumptuous thoughts 
Those freer beauties, ev'n in them, seem faults. 170 

Some figures monstrous and mis-shaped appear, 
Considered singly, or beheld too near, 
Which, but proportioned to their light, or place, 
Due distance reconciles to form and grace. 
A prudent chief not always must display 175 



EssAr ojsr criticism. 9 

His powers in equal ranks, and fair array. 

But with the occasion and the place comply, 

Conceal his force, nay, seem sometimes to fly. 

Those oft are stratagems which error seem, 

Nor is it Homer nods, but we that dream. 180 

Still green with bays each ancient altar stands, ^ 
Above the reach of sacrilegious hands ; 
Secure from flames, from envy's fiercer rage, 
Destructive war, and all-involving age. 
See, from each clime the learned their incense bring! 185 
Hear, in all tongues consenting pseans ring ! 
In praise so just let every voice be joined, 
And fill the general chorus of mankind. 
Hail, bards triumphant ! born in happier days ; 
Immortal heirs of universal praise ! 190 

Whose honors with increase of ages grow. 
As streams roll down, enlarging as they flow ; 
Nations unborn your mighty names shall sound, 
And worlds applaud that must "not yet be found ! 
Oh, may some spark of your celestial fire, 195 

The last, the meanest of your sons inspire, 
(That on weak wings, from far, pursues your flights, 
Glows while he reads, but trembles as he writes), 
To teach vain wits a science little known, 
To admire superior sense, and doubt their own ! 200 



II. 

Causes hindering a true judgment. 1. Pride, v. 208. 2. Im- 
perfect learning, v. 215. 3. Judging by parts, and not by the whole, 
vv. 233 to 288. Critics in wit, language, versification only, vv. 288, 
305, 339, etc. 4. Being too hard to please, or too apt to admire, 
V. 384. 5. Partiality — too much love to a sect — to the ancients or 
moderns, v. 394. 6. Prejudice or prevention, v. 408. 7. Singu- 



10 POPE. 

larity, v. 424. 8. Inconstancy, v. 430. 9. Party spirit, vv. 452, 
etc. 10. Envy, v. 466. Against envy, and in j)raise of good 
nature, vv. 508, etc. When severity is chiefly to be used by critics, 
vv. 526, etc. 

Of all the causes which conspire to blind 
Man's erring judgment, and misguide the mind, 
What the weak head with strongest bias rules, 
Is pride, the never-failing voice of fools. 
Whatever nature has in worth denied, 205 

She gives in large recruits of needful pride ; 
For as in bodies, thus in souls, we find 
What wants in blood and spirits, swelled with wind : 
Pride, where wit fails, steps in to our defence. 
And fills up all the mighty void of sense. 2io 

If once right reason drives that cloud away, 
Truth breaks upon us with resistless day. 
Trust not yourself ; but your defects to know, 
Make use of every friend — and every foe. 

A little learning is a dangerous thing ; 215 

Drink deep, or taste not the Pierian spring : 
There shallow draughts intoxicate the brain, 
And drinking largely sobers us again. 
Fired at first sight with what the muse imparts, 
In fearless youth we tempt the heights of arts, 220 

While from the bounded level of our mind 
Short views we take, nor see the lengths behind ; 
But more advanced, behold with strange surprise 
New distant scenes of endless science rise ! 
So pleased at first the towering Alps we try, 225 

Mount o'er the vales, and seem to tread the sky, 
The eternal snows appear already past. 
And the first clouds and mountains seem the last; 
But, those attained, we tremble to survey 



ESSAY ON CRITICISM. 11 

The growing labors of the lengthened way, 230 

The increasing prospect tires our wandering eyes, 
Hills peep o'er hills, and Alps on Alps arise ! 

'A perfect judge will read each work of wit 
With the same spirit that its author writ : 
Survey the whole, nor seek slight faults to find 235 

Where nature moves, and rapture warms the mind ; 
Nor lose, for that malignant dull delight, 
The generous pleasure to be charmed with wdt. 
But in such lays as neither ebb, nor flow. 
Correctly cold, and regularly low, 240 

That shunning faults, one quiet tenor keep ; 
We cannot blame indeed — but we may sleep. 
In wit, as nature, what affects our hearts 
Is not the exactness of peculiar parts ; 
'Tis not a lip, or eye, we beauty call, 245 

But the joint force and full result of all. 
Thus when we view some well-proportioned dome 
(The world's just wonder, and even thine, Eome!), 
No single parts unequally surprise, 

All comes united to the admiring eyes ; 250 

No monstrous height, or breadth, or length appear ; 
The whole at once is bold, and regular. 

Whoever thinks a faultless piece to see, 
Thinks what ne'er was, nor is, nor e'er shall be. 
In every work regard the writer's end, 255 

Since none can compass more than they intend ; 
And if the means be just, the conduct true. 
Applause, in spite of trivial faults, is due ; 
As men of breeding, sometimes men of w^it. 
To avoid great errors, must the less commit : 2()0 

Neglect the rules each verbal critic lays, 
Yov not to know some trifles is a praise. 



12 POPE. 

Most critics, fond of some subservient art, 

Still make the whole depend upon a part : 

They talk of principles, but notions prize, 265 

And all to one loved folly sacrifice. 

Once on a time. La Mancha's knight, they say, 
A certain bard encountering on the way, 
Discoursed in terms as just, with looks as sage, 
As e'er could Dennis of the Grecian stage ; 270 

Concluding all were desperate sots and fools, 
Who durst depart from Aristotle's rules. 
Our author, happy in a judge so nice. 
Produced his play, and begged the knight's advice ; 
Made him observe the subject, and the plot, 275 

The manners, passions, unities ; what not ? 
All which, exact to rule, were brought about, 
Were but a combat in the lists left out. 
'' What ! leave the combat out ? " exclaims the knight ; 
Yes, or we must renounce the Stagirite. 280 

''Not so, by Heaven ! " (he answers in a rage), 
" Knights, squires, and steeds, must enter on the stage." 
So vast a throng the stage can ne'er contain. 
" Then build a new, or act it in a plain." 

Thus critics, of less judgment than caprice, 285 

Curious not knowing, not exact but nice, 
Form short ideas ; and offend in arts 
(As most in manners) by a love to parts. 

Some to conceit alone their taste confine, 
And glittering thoughts struck out at every line ; 290 

Pleased with a work where nothing's just or fit. 
One glaring chaos and wild heap of wit. 
Poets like painters, thus, unskilled to trace 
The naked nature and the living grace. 
With gold and jewels cover every part, 295 



ESSAY ON CRITICISM. 13 

And hide with ornaments their want of art. 

True wit is nature to advantage dressed, 

What oft was thought, but ne'er so well expressed ; 

Something, whose truth convinced at sight we find, 

That gives us back the image of our mind. 300 

As shades more sweetly recommend the light, 

So modest plainness sets off sprightly wit. 

For works may have more wit than does 'em good, 

As bodies perish through excess of blood. 

Others for language all their care express, 305 

And value books, as women men, for dress: 
Their praise is still, — the style is excellent : 
The sense, they humbly take upon content. 
Words are like leaves ; and where they most abound. 
Much fruit of sense beneath is rarely found, 3io 

False eloquence, like the prismatic glass, 
Its gaudy colors spreads on every place ; 
The face of nature we no more survey, 
All glares alike, without distinction gay : 
But true expression, like the unchanging sun, 315 

Clears and improves whate'er it shines upon, 
It gilds all objects but it alters none. 
Expression is the dress of thought, and still 
Appears more decent, as more suitable ; 
A vile conceit in pompous words expressed 320 

Is like a clown in regal purple dressed : 
For different styles with different subjects sort, 
As several garbs with country, town, and court. 
Some by old words to fame have made pretence, 
Ancients in phrase, mere moderns in their sense ; 325 

Such labored nothings, in so strange a style, 
Amaze the unlearned, and make the learned smile. 
Unlucky, as Fungoso in the play, 



14 POPE. 

These sparks with awkward vanity display 

What the fine gentleman wore yesterday ; 330 

And but so mimic ancient wits at best, 

As apes our grandsires, in their doublets dressed. 

In words, as fashions, the same rule will hold ; 

Alike fantastic, if too new, or old : 

Be not the first by whom the new are tried, 335 

Nor yet the last to lay the old aside. 

But most by numbers judge a poet's song; 
And smooth or rough, with them is right or wrong: 
In the bright Muse though thousand charms conspire, 
Her voice is all these tuneful fools admire ; 340 

Who haunt Parnassus but to please their ear, 
Not mend their minds; as some to church repair, 
Not for the doctrine, but the music there. 
These equal syllables alone require, 

Though oft the ear the open vowels tire ; 345 

While expletives their feeble aid do join ; 
And ten low words oft creep in one dull line : 
While they ring round the same unvaried chimes. 
With sure returns of still expected rhymes ; 
Where'er you find " the cooling western breeze," 350 

In the next line, it " whispers through the trees " : 
If crystal streams " with pleasing murmurs creep," 
The reader's threatened (not in vain) Avith " sleep " : 
Then, at the last and only couplet fraught 
With some unmeaning thing they call a thought, 355 

A needless Alexandrine ends the song 
That, like a wounded snake, drags its slow length along. 
Leave such to tune their own dull rhymes, and know 
What's roundly smooth or languishingly slow; 
And praise the easy vigor of a line, 360 

Where Denham's strength, and Waller's sweetness join. 



ESSAY ON CRITICISM. 15 

True ease in writing comes from art, not chance, 

As those move easiest who have learned to dance. 

'Tis not enough no harshness gives offence, 

The sound must seem an echo to the sense : 365 

Soft is the strain when zephyr gently blows, 

And the smooth stream in smoother numbers flows ; 

But when loud surges lash the sounding shore, 

The hoarse, rough verse should like the torrent roar : 

When Ajax strives some rock's vast strength to throw, 370 

The line, too, labors, and the words move slow ; 

Not so, when swift Camilla scours the plain, 

Flies o'er the unbending corn, and skims along the main. 

Hear how Timotheus' varied lays surprise. 

And bid alternate passions fall and rise ! 375 

While, at each change, the son of Libyan Jove 

Now burns with glory, and then melts with love, 

Now his fierce eyes with sparkling fury glow, 

Now sighs steal out, and tears begin to flow : 

Persians and Greeks like turns of nature found^ ,. 380 

And the world's victor stood subdued by sound ! 

The power of music all our hearts allow, 

And what Timotheus was, is Dryden now. 

Avoid extremes ; and shun the fault of such, 
Who still are pleased too little or too much. 385 

At every trifle scorn to take offence, 
That always shows great pride or little sense ; 
Those heads, as stomachs, are not sure the best, 
Which nauseate all, and nothing can digest. 
Yet let not each gay turn thy rapture move ; 390 

For fools admire, but men of sense approve : 
As things seem large which we through mists descry, 
Dulness is ever aj^t to magnify. 

Some foreign writers, some our own despise ; 



16 POPE. 

The ancients only, or the moderns, prize. 395 

Thus wit, like faith, by each man is applied 

To one small sect, and all are damned beside. 

Meanly they seek the blessing to confine, 

And force that sun but on a part to shine, 

Which not alone the southern wit sublimes, 400 

But ripens spirits in cold northern climes ; 

Which from the first has shone on ages past, 

Enlights the present, and shall warm the last ; 

Though each may feel increases and decays, 

And see now clearer and now darker days. 405 

Regard not then if wit be old or new. 

But blame the false, and value still the true. 

Some ne'er advance a judgment of their own. 
But catch the spreading notion of the town ; 
They reason and conclude by precedent, 410 

And own stale nonsense which they ne'er invent. 
Some judge of authors' names, not works, and then 
Nor praise nor blame the writings, but the men. 
Of all this servile herd the worst is he 
That in proud dulness joins with quality, 415 

A constant critic at the great man's board, 
To fetch and carry nonsense for my lord. 
What woful stuff this madrigal would be. 
In some starved hackney sonneteer, or me ? 
But let a lord once own the happy lines, 420 

How the wit brightens ! how the style refines ! 
Before his sacred name flies every fault. 
And each exalted stanza teems with thought ! 

The vulgar thus through imitation err ; 
As oft the learned by being singular ; 425 

So much they scorn the crowd, that if the throng 
By chance go right, they purposely go wrong ; 



ESSAY ON CRITICISM. 17 

So schismatics the plain believers quit, 
And are but damned for having too much wit. 
Some praise at morning what they blame at night; 430 
But always think the last opinion right. 
A. muse by these is like a mistress used, 
This hour she's idolized, the next abused ; 
While their weak heads, like towns unfortified, 
'Twixt sense and nonsense daily change their side. 435 
Ask them the cause ; they're wiser still, they say ; 
And still to-morrow's wiser than to-day. 
We think our fathers fools, so wise we grow, 
Our wiser sons, no doubt, will think us so. 
Once school-divines this zealous isle o'erspread ; 440 

Who knew most sentences, was deepest read ; 
Faith, gospel, all, seemed made to be disputed, 
And none had sense enough to be confuted : 
Scotists and Thomists, now, in peace remain, - 
Amidst their kindred cobwebs in Duck-lane. 445 

If faith itself has different dresses worn. 
What wonder modes in wit should take their turn ? 
Oft, leaving what is natural and fit, 
The current folly proves the ready wit ; 
And authors think their reputation safe, 450 

Which lives as long as fools are pleased to laugh. 
Some valuing those of their own side or mind. 
Still make themselves the measure of mankind: 
Fondly we think we honor merit then. 
When we but praise ourselves in other men. 465 

Parties in wit attend on those of state. 
And public faction doubles private hate. 
Pride, malice, folly, against Dryden rose, 
In various shapes of parsons, critics, beaus ; 
But sense survived, when merry jests were past; 460 



18 POPE. 

For rising merit will buoy up at last. 

Might he return, and bless once more our eyes, 

New Blackmores and new Milbourns must arise : 

Nay, should great Homer lift his awful head, 

Zoilus again would start up from the dead. 465 

Envy will merit, as its shade, pursue ; 

But like a shadow, proves the substance true ; 

For envied Wit, like Sol eclipsed, makes known 

The opposing body's grossness, not its own. 

When first that sun too powerful beams displays, 470 

It draws up vapors which obscure its rays ; 

But even those clouds at last adorn its way, 

Reflect new glories and augment the day. 

Be thou the first true merit to befriend ; 
His praise is lost, who stays, till all commend. 475 

Short is the date, alas, of modern rhymes. 
And 'tis but just to let them live betimes. 
No longer now that golden age appears, 
When patriarch-wits survived a thousand years : 
Now length of fame (our second life) is lost, 480 

And bare threescore is all even that can boast ; 
Our sons their fathers' failing language see, 
And such as Chaucer is, shall Dryden be. 
So when the faithful pencil has designed 
Some bright idea of the master's mind, 485 

Where a new world leaps out at his command, 
And ready nature waits upon his hand ; 
When the ripe colors soften and unite, 
And sweetly melt into just shade and light; 
When mellowing years their full perfection give, 490 

And each bold figure just begins to live. 
The treacherous colors the fair art betray. 
And all the bright creation fades away ! 



ESSAY ON CRITICISM. 19 

Unhappy wit, like most mistaken things, 
Atones not for that envy which it brings, 495 

In youth alone its empty praise Ave boast, 
But soon the short-lived vanity is lost : 
Like some fair flower the early spring supplies, 
That gayly blooms, but even in blooming dies. 
What is this wit, which must our cares employ ? 50;) 

The owner's wife, that other men enjoy ; 
Then most our trouble still when most admired, 
And still the more we give, the more required ; 
Whose fame with pains we guard, but lose with ease. 
Sure some to vex, but never all to please ; 505 

'Tis what the vicious fear, the virtuous shun. 
By fools 'tis hated, and by knaves undone ! 

If wit so much from ignorance undergo. 
Ah, let not learning, too, commence its foe ! 
Of old, those met rewards who could excell, 5io 

And such were praised who but endeavored well : 
Though triumphs Avere to generals only due. 
Crowns were reserved to grace the soldiers, too. 
Now, they who reach Parnassus' lofty crown. 
Employ their pains to spurn some others down ; 515 

And while self-love each jealous Avriter rules. 
Contending wits become the sport of fools : 
But still the worst with most regret commend. 
For each ill author is as bad a friend. 
To what base ends, and by Avhat abject ways, 520 

Are mortals urged through sacred lust of praise ! 
Ah, ne'er so dire a thirst of glory boast. 
Nor in the critic let the man be lost. 
Good nature and good sense must ever join ; 
To err is human, to forgive, divine. 525 

But if in noble minds some dregs remain 



20 POPE. 

Not yet purged off, of spleen and sour disdain ; 

Discharge that rage on more provoking crimes, 

Nor fear a dearth in these flagitious times. 

No pardon vile obscenity should find, 630 

Though wit and art conspire to move your mind ; 

But dulness with obscenity must prove 

As shameful, sure, as impotence in love. 

In the fat age of pleasure, wealth, and ease. 

Sprung the rank weed, and thrived with large increase : 535 

When love was all an easy monarch's care; 

Seldom at council, never in a war : 

Jilts ruled the state, and statesmen farces writ ; 

Nay, wits had pensions, and young lords had wit : 

The fair sat panting at a courtier's play, 640 

And not a mask went unimproved away : 

The modest fan was lifted up no more. 

And virgins smiled at what they blushed before. 

The following license of a foreign reign 

Did all the dregs of bold Socinus drain ; 545 

Then unbelieving priests reformed the nation, 

And taught more pleasant methods of salvation ; 

Where Heaven's free subjects might their rights dispute, 

Lest God himself should seem too absolute : 

Pulpits their sacred satire learned to spare, 650 

And vice admired to find a flatterer there ! 

Encouraged thus, wit's Titans braved the skies, 

And the press groaned with licensed blasphemies. 

These monsters, critics ! with your darts engage. 

Here point your thunder, and exhaust your rage ! 555 

Yet shun their fault, who, scandalously nice, 

Will needs mistake an author into vice ; 

All seems infected that the infected spy. 

As all looks yellow to the jaundiced eye. 



ESSAY ON CRITICISM. 21 



III. 

Rules for the conduct of manners in a critic. 1. Candor, v. 563. 
Modesty, v. 566. Good breeding, v. 572. Sincerity, and freedom 
of advice, v. 578. 2. Wlien one's counsel is to be restrained, v. 
584. Character of an incorrigible poet, v. 600. And of an im- 
pertinent critic, vv. 610, etc. Character of a good critic, v. 629. 
The history of criticism, and characters of the best critics. Aristotle, 
V. 645. Horace, v. 653. Dionysius, v. 665. Petronius, v. 667. 
Quintilian, v. 670. Longinus, v. 675. Of the decay of criticism, 
and its revival. Erasmus, v. 693. Vida, v. 705. Boileau, v. 
714. Lord Roscommon, etc. v. 725. Conclusion. 

Learn then what morals critics ought to show, 560 

For 'tis but half a judge's task, to know. 
'Tis not enough, taste, judgment, learning, join; 
In all you speak, let truth and candor shine : 
That not alone what to your sense is due 
All may allow ; but seek your friendship, too. 565 

Be silent always when you doubt your sense ; 
And speak, though sure, with seeming diffidence : 
Some positive, persisting fops we know, 
Who, if once wrong, will needs be always so ; 
But you, with pleasure own your errors past, 570 

And make each day a critic on the last. 

'Tis not enough, your counsel still be true ; 
Blunt truths more mischief than nice falsehoods do ; 
Men must be taught as if you taught them not. 
And things unknown proposed as things forgot. 575 

Without good breeding, truth is disapproved ; 
That only makes superior sense beloved. 

Be niggards of advice on no pretence ; 
For the worst avarice is that of sense. 
With mean complacence ne'er betray your trust, 580 



22 POPE. 

Nor be so civil as to prove unjust. 
Fear not the anger of the wise to raise ; 
Those best can bear reproof, who merit praise. 

'Twere well might critics still this freedom take, 
But Appius reddens at each word you speak, 585 

And stares, tremendous, with a threatening eye, 
Like some fierce tyrant in old tapestry. 
Fear most to tax an honorable fool. 
Whose right it is, uncensured, to be dull ; 
Such, without wit, are poets when they please, 590 

As without learning they can take degrees. 
Leave dangerous truths to unsuccessful satires, 
And flattery to fulsome dedicators. 
Whom, when they praise, the world believes no more 
Than when they promise to give scribbling o'er. 595 

'Tis best sometimes your censure to restrain, 
And charitably let the dull be vain : 
Your silence there is better than your spite. 
For who can rail so long as they can write ? 
Still humming on, their drowsy course they keep, 600 

And lashed so long, like tops, are lashed asleep. 
False steps but help them to renew the race. 
As, after stumbling, jades will mend their pace. 
What crowds of these, impenitently bold. 
In sounds and jingling syllables grown old, 605 

Still run on poets, in a raging vein. 
Even to the dregs and squeezings of the brain, 
Strain out the last dull droppings of their sense. 
And rhyme with all the rage of impotence. 

Such shameless bards we have ; and yet 'tis true, 610 
There are as mad, abandoned critics, too. 
The bookful blockhead, ignorantly read, 
With loads of learned lumber in his head. 



ESSAY ON CRITICISM. 23 

With his own tongue still edifies his ears, 
And always listening to himself appears. 615 

All books he reads, and all he reads assails, 
From Dryden's Fables down to Durfey's Tales. 
With him, most authors steal their works, or buy ; 
Garth did not write his own Dispensary. 
Name a new play, and he's the poet's friend, 620 

Nay, showed his faults — but when would poets mend ? 
No place so sacred from such fops is barred, 
^Nor is Paul's church more safe than Paul's churchyard : 
CN"ay, fly to altars ; there they'll talk you dead : 
^or fools rush in where angels fear to tread. 625 

Distrustful sense with modest caution speaks, 
It still looks home, and short excursions makes ; 
But rattling nonsense in full volleys breaks, 
And never shocked, and never turned aside. 
Bursts out, resistless, with a thundering tide. 630 

But where's the man, who counsel can bestow, 
Still pleased to teach, and yet not proud to know? 
Unbiassed, or by favor, or by spite ; 

Not dully prepossessed, nor blindly right; 634 

Though learned, well-bred ; and though well-bred, sincere. 
Modestly bold, and humanly severe : 
Who to a friend his faults can freely show, 
And gladly praise the merit of a foe ? 
Blest with a taste exact, yet unconfined ; 
A knowledge both of books and human kind : 640 

Generous converse; a soul exempt from pride; 
And love to praise, with reason on his side ? 

Such once were critics ; such the happy few, 
Athens and Kome in better ages knew. 
The mighty Stagirite first left the shore, 645 

Spread all his sails, and durst the deeps explore : 



24 POPE. 

He steered securely, and discovered far, 

Led by the light of the Mseonian Star. 

Poets, a race long imconfined, and free, 

Still fond and proud of savage liberty, 650 

Received his laws ; and stood convinced 'twas fit, 

Who conquered nature, should preside o'er wit. 

Horace still charms with graceful negligence, 
And without method talks us into sense, 
Will, like a friend, familiarly convey 655 

The truest notions in the easiest way. 
He, who supreme in judgment, as in wit. 
Might boldly censure, as he boldly writ. 
Yet judged with coolness, though he sung with tire ; 
His precepts teach but what his works inspire. 660 

Our critics take a contrary extreme. 
They judge with fury, but they write with phlegm : 
Nor suffers Horace more in wrong translations 
By wits, than critics in as wrong quotations. 

See Dionysius Homer's thoughts refine, 665 

And call new beauties forth from every line ! 

Fancy and art in gay Petronius please, 
The scholar's learning, with the courtier's ease. 

In grave Quintilian's copious work, we find 
The justest rules, and clearest method joined : 670 

Thus useful arms in magazines we place. 
All ranged in order, and disposed with grace. 
But less to please the eye, than arm the hand. 
Still fit for use, and ready at command. 

Thee, bold Longinus ! all the Nine inspire, 675 

And bless their critic with a poet's fire. 
An ardent judge, who zealous in his trust, 
With warmth gives sentence, yet is always just; 
Whose own example strengthens all his laws ; 



ESSAY ON CBITICIS3I. 25 

And is himself that great sublime he draws. 680 

Thus long succeeding critics justly reigned, 
License repressed, and useful laws ordained. 
Learning and E-ome alike in empire grew; 
And arts still followed where her eagles flew; 
From the same foes, at last, both felt their doom, 085 

And the same age saw learning fall, and Rome. 
With tyranny, then superstition joined, 
As that the body, this enslaved the mind ; 
Much was believed, but little understood, 
And to be dull was construed to be good; 690 

A second deluge learning thus o'er-run, 
And the monks finished what the Goths begun. 

At length Erasmus, that great injured name 
(The glory of the priesthood, and the shame !), 
Stemmed the wild torrent of a barbarous age, 695 

And drove those holy vandals off the stage. 

But see ! each Muse, in Leo's golden days, 
Starts from her trance, and trims her withered bays, 
Rome's ancient genius, o'er its ruins spread. 
Shakes off the dust, and rears his reverend head. 700 

Then sculpture and her sister-arts revive ; 
Stones leaped to form, and rocks began to live ; 
With sweeter notes each rising temple rung ; 
A Raphael painted, and a Vida sung. 
Immortal Vida : on whose honored brow 705 

The poet's bays and critic's ivy grow : 
Cremona now shall ever boast thy name, 
As next in place to Mantua, next in fame ! 

But soon by impious arms from Latium chased, 
Their ancient bounds the banished Muses passed ; 710 

Thence arts o'er all the northern world advance. 
But critic-learning flourished most in France : 



26 POPE. 

The rules a nation, born to serve, obeys ; 

And Boileau still in right of Horace sways. 

But we, brave Britons, foreign laws despised, 716 

And kept unconquered, and uncivilized ; 

Fierce for the liberties of wit, and bold, 

We still defied the Romans, as of old. 

Yet some there were, among the sounder few 

Of those who less presumed, and better knew, 720 

Who durst assert the juster ancient cause, 

And here restored wit's fundamental laws. 

Such was the Muse, whose rules and practice tell, 

"Nature's chief master-piece is writing well." 

Such was Roscommon, not more learned than good, 725 

With manners generous as his noble blood; 

To him the wit of Greece and Rome was known. 

And every author's merit, but his own. 

Such late was Walsh — the Muse's judge and friend, 

Who justly knew to blame or to commend; 730 

To failings mild, but zealous for desert ; 

The clearest head, and the sincerest heart. 

This humble praise, lamented shade ! receive, 

This praise at least a grateful Muse may give : 

The Muse, whose early voice you taught to sing, 735 

Prescribed her heights, and pruned her tender wing, 

(Her guide now lost) no more attempts to rise. 

But in low numbers short excursions tries : 

Content, if thence the unlearned their wants may view. 

The learned reflect on what before they knew : 740 

Careless of censure, nor too fond of fame ; 

Still pleased to praise, yet not afraid to blame, 

Averse alike to flatter, or offend ; 

Not free from faults, nor yet too vain to mend. 



THOMAS GRAY. 

ELEGY WRITTEN IN A COUNTRY 
CHURCH-YARD. 

THE PROGRESS OF POESY. 



ELEGY 

WRITTEN IN A COUNTRY CHURCH- YARD. 



The curfew tolls the knell of parting day, 
The lowing herd wind slowly o'er the lea, 

The ploughman homeward plods his weary way, 
And leaves the world to darkness and to me. 

Now fades the glimmering landscape on the sight, 5 
And all the air a solemn stillness holds. 

Save where the beetle wheels his droning flight, 
And drowsy tinklings lull the distant folds ; 

Save that from yonder ivy-mantled tower 

The moping owl does to the moon complain lo 

Of such as, wandering near her secret bower, 

Molest her ancient solitary reign. 

Beneath those rugged elms, that yew-tree's shade. 
Where heaves the turf in many a mouldering heap, 

Each in his narrow cell forever laid, 15 

The rude forefathers of the hamlet sleep. 

The breezy call of incense-breathing morn. 

The swallow twittering from the straw-built shed. 

The cock's shrill clarion, or the echoing horn. 

No more shall rouse them from their lowly bed. 20 

29 



30 GRAY. 

For them no more the blazing hearth shall burn, 
Or busy housewife ply her evening care ; 

No children run to lisp their sire's return, 
Or climb his knees the envied kiss to share. 

Oft did the harvest to their sickle yield, 25 

Their furrow oft the stubborn glebe has broke ; 

How jocund did they drive their team afield ! 

How bowed the woods beneath their sturdy stroke ! 

Let not ambition mock their useful toil, 

Their homely joys, and destiny obscure; 30 

Nor grandeur hear, with a disdainful smile. 

The short and simple annals of the poor. 

The boast of heraldry, the pomp of power. 
And all that beauty, all that wealth e'er gave, 

Awaits alike the inevitable hour. 35 

The paths of glory lead but to the grave. 

Nor you, ye proud, impute to these the fault. 
If memory o'er their tomb no trophies raise, 

Where thro' the long-drawn aisle and fretted vault 
The pealing anthem swells the note of praise. 40 

Can storied urn or animated bust 

Back to its mansion call the fleeting breath ? 

Can honor's voice provoke the silent dust, 
Or flattery soothe the dull cold ear of death ? 

Perhaps in this neglected spot is laid 45 

Some heart once pregnant with celestial fire ; 

Hands, that the rod of empire might have swayed. 
Or waked to ecstasy the living lyre. 



ELEGY. 31 

But knowledge to tlieir eyes her ample page 

Rich with the spoils of time did ne'er unroll ; 50 

Chill penury repressed their noble rage, 
And froze the genial current of the soul. 

Full many a gem of purest ray serene, 

The dark unf athomed caves of ocean bear ; 

Full many a flower is born to blush unseen, 55 

And waste its sweetness on the desert air. ' 

Some village Hampden, that with dauntless breast 
The little tyrant of his fields withstood ; 

Some mute inglorious Milton here may rest. 

Some Cromwell guiltless of his country's blood. 60 

The applause of listening senates to command, 
The threats of pain and ruin to despise. 

To scatter plenty o'er a smiling land. 

And read their history in a nation's eyes. 

Their lot forbade ; nor circumscribed alone 65 

Their growing virtues, but their crimes confined ; 

Forbade to wade through slaughter to a throne, 
And shut the gates of mercy on mankind, 

The struggling pangs of conscious truth to hide, 

To quench the blushes of ingenuous shame, 70 

Or heap the shrine of luxury and pride 
With incense kindled at the muse's flame. 

Far from the madding crowd's ignoble strife, 
Their sober wishes never learned to stray ; 

Along the cool sequestered vale of life 75 

They kept the noiseless tenor of their way. 



32 GBAY. 

Yet even these bones from insult to protect 
Some frail memorial still erected nigh, 

With uncouth rhymes and shapeless sculpture decked, 
Implores the passing tribute of a sigh. 80 

Their name, their years, spelled by the unlettered muse, 

The place of fame and elegy supply ; 
And many a holy text around she strews, 

That teach the rustic moralist to die. 

For who, to dumb forgetfulness a prey, 85 

This pleasing anxious being e'er resigned. 

Left the warm precincts of the cheerful day. 
Nor cast one longing lingering look behind ? 

On some fond breast the parting soul relies, 

Some pious drops the closing eye requires ; 90 

Even from the tomb the voice of nature cries. 
Even in our ashes live their wonted fires. 

For thee, who mindful of the unhonored dead 
Dost in these lines their artless tale relate : 

If chance, by lonely contemplation led, 95 

Some kindred spirit shall inquire thy fate, 

Haply some hoary-headed swain may say, 
" Oft have Ave seen him at the peep of dawn 

Brushing with hasty steps the dews away 

To meet the sun upon the upland lawn. 100 

" There at the foot of yonder nodding beech. 
That wreathes its old fantastic roots so high. 

His listless length at noontide would he stretch, 
And pore upon the brook that babbles by. 



ELEGY. 83 

"Hard by yon wood, now smiling as in scorn, 105 

Muttering liis wayward fancies he would rove, 

Now drooping, woful wan, like one forlorn, 

Or crazed with, care, or crossed in hopeless love. 

"One morn I missed him on the customed hill, 

Along the heath and near his favorite tree ; no 

Another came ; nor yet beside the rill, 
Nor up the lawn, not at the wood was he ; 

" The next with dirges due in sad array 

Slow thro' the church-way path we saw him borne. 

Approach and read (for thou can'st read) the lay, 115 
Graved on the stone beneath yon aged thorn." 

THE EPITAPH. 

Here rests his head upon the lap of earth 
A youth to fortune and to fame unknoion. 

Fair science frowned not on his humble birth, 

And melancholy marked him for her own. 120 

Large loas his boimty, arid his soul sincere, 
Heaven did a recomiiense as largely send; 

He gave to misery all he had, a tear. 

He gained from Heaven (Hivas all he luished) a friend. 

No farther seek his merits to disclose, 125 

Or draw his frailties from their dread abode, 

i^Tliere they cdike in trembling hope repose,) 
The bosom of his Father and his God. 



THE PEOGRESS OF POESY. 

A PINDARIC ODE. 

^UJpdvTa <TVV€T0t<TLV ' is 

A^ rb rrdv epfirjpiuv xar/fei. 

— Pindar, Olymp, II. 

I. 1. 

Awake, ^olian lyre, awake, 
And give to rapture all thy trembling strings. 
From Helicon's harmonious springs 

A thousand rills their mazy progress take : 
The laughing flowers, that round them blow, 5 

Drink life and fragrance as they flow. 
Now the rich stream of music winds along. 
Deep, majestic, smooth, and strong. 
Thro' verdant vales, and Ceres' golden reign : 
Now rolling down the steep amain, 10 

Headlong, impetuous, see it pour : 
The rocks, and nodding groves rebellow to the roar. 

I. 2. 

Oh ! Sovereign of the willing soul. 
Parent of sweet and solemn-breathing airs, 
Enchanting shell ! the sullen Cares 15 

And frantic Passions hear thy soft control. 
On Thracia's hills the Lord of AVar, 

34 



PBOGRESS OF POESY, 35 

Has curbed the fury of his car, 

And droj)ped his thirsty lance at thy command. 

Perching on the sceptred hand 20 

Of Jove, thy magic hills the feathered king 

With ruf&ed plumes, and flagging wing : 

Quenched in dark clouds of slumber lie 

The terror of his beak, and lightnings of his eye. 

I. 3. 

Thee the voice, the dance, obey, 25 

Tempered to thy warbled lay. 

O'er Idalia's velvet green 

The rosy-crowned Loves are seen 

On Cytherea's day 

With antic Sports, and blue-eyed Pleasures, so 

Frisking light in frolic measures ; 

Now pursuing, now retreating, 

Now in circling troops they meet : 
To brisk notes in cadence beating 

Glance their many-twinkling feet. 35 

Slow melting strains their Queen's approach declare : 

Where'er she turns the Graces homage pay. 
With arms sublime, that float upon the air. 

In gliding state she wins her easy way : 
O'er her warm cheek, and rising bosom, move 40 

The bloom of young Desire, and purple light of Love. 

11. 1. 

Man's feeble race what ills await ! 
Labor, and Penury, the racks of Pain, 
Disease, and Sorrow's weeping train, 



36 GRAY. 

And Death, sad refuge from the storms of Fate ! 45 
The fond complaint, my Song, disprove, 
And justify the laws of Jove. 
.Say, has he given in vain the heavenly muse ? 
Night, and all her sickly dews. 

Her spectres wan, and birds of boding cry, 50 

He gives to range the dreary sky : 
Till down the eastern cliffs afar 
Hyperion's march they spy, and glittering shafts of war. 

II. 2. . 

In climes beyond the solar road, 
AVhere shaggy forms o'er ice-built mountains roam, 55 
The muse has broke the twilight-gloom 
To cheer the shivering Native's dull abode. 
And oft, beneath the odorous shade 
Of Chili's boundless forests laid, 

She deigns to hear the savage youth repeat, 60 

In loose numbers wildly sweet. 
Their feather-cinctured Chiefs, and dusky Loves. 
Her track, where'er the Goddess roves. 
Glory pursue, and generous Shame, 
The imconquerable Mind, and Freedom's holy flame. 65 

II. 3. 

Woods, that wave o'er Delphi's steep, 
Isles, that crown the ^gean deep. 

Fields, that cool Ilissus laves. 

Or where Mseander's amber waves 
In lingering labyrinths creep, 70 

How do your tuneful echoes languish. 



PROGRESS OF POESY. 37 

Mute, but to the voice of Anguish ! 
Where each old poetic mountain 

Inspiration breathed around : 
Every shade and hallowed fountain 75 

Murmured deep a solemn sound : 
Till the sad Nine in Greece's evil hour 

Left their Parnassus for the Latian plains. 
Alike they scorn the pomp of tyrant Power, 

And coward Vice, that revels in her chains. 80 

When Latium had her lofty spirit lost. 
They sought, oh Albion ! next thy sea-encircled coast. 

III. 1. 

Far from the sun and summer-gale. 
In thy green lap was nature's darling laid. 
What time, where lucid Avon strayed, 85 

To him the mighty mother did unveil 
Her awful face. The dauntless child 
Stretched forth his little arms, and smiled. 
This pencil take (she said) whose colors clear 
Pichly paint the vernal year ; 90 

Thine too these golden keys, immortal boy ! 
This can unlock the gates of joy, 
Of horror that, and thrilling fears. 
Or ope the sacred source of sympathetic tears. 

III. 2. 

Nor second he, that rode sublime 95 

Upon the seraph wings of ecstacy, 
The secrets of the abyss to spy. 

He passed the flaming bounds of place and time : 



38 GRAY. 

The living throne, the sapphire-blaze, 
Where angels tremble, while they gaze, 100 

He saw ; but, blasted with excess of light, 
Closed his eyes in endless night. 
Behold, where Dryden's less presumptuous car 
Wide o'er the fields of glory bear 

Two coursers of ethereal race, 105 

With necks in thunder clothed, and long-resounding 
pace. 

III. 3. 

Hark, his hands the lyre explore ! 
Bright-eyed Fancy hovering o'er 
Scatters from her pictured urn 

Thoughts, that breathe, and words, that burn. lio 

But ah ! 'tis heard no more — 

Oh ! lyre divine, what daring spirit 

Wakes thee now ? tho' he inherit 
Nor the pride, nor ample pinion. 

That the Theban Eagle bear 115 

Sailing with supreme dominion 

Thro' the azure deep of air : 
Yet oft before his infant eyes would run 

Such forms, as glitter in the muse's ray 
AVith orient hues, unborrowed of the sun : 120 

Yet shall he mount, and keep his distant way 
Beyond the limits of a vulgar fate. 
Beneath the good how far — but far above the great. 



OLIVER GOLDSMITH. 

THE TRAVELLER. 
THE DESERTED VILLAGE. 



THE TRAVELLER, 

OE, A PEOSPECT OF SOCIETY. 



Remote, unfriended, melaiiclioly, slow, 

Or by the lazy Scheldt or wandering Po ; 

Or onward, where the rude Carinthian boor 

Against the houseless stranger shuts the door ; 

Or where Campania's plain forsaken lies, 6 

A weary waste expanding to the skies ; 

Where'er I roam, whatever realms to see, 

My heart untravelled fondly turns to thee ; 

Still to my brother turns, with ceaseless pain. 

And drags at each remove a lengthening chain. 10 

Eternal blessings crown my earliest friend, 
And round his dwelling guardian saints attend ! 
Blest be that spot where cheerful guests retire 
To pause from toil, and trim their evening fire : 
Blest that abode where want and pain repair, 15 

And every stranger finds a ready chair : 
Blest be those feasts with simple plenty crowned. 
Where all the ruddy family around 
Laugh at the jests or pranks that never fail. 
Or sigh with pity at some mournful tale ; 20 

« 41 



42 GOLDSMITH. 

Or press the bashful stranger to his food, 
And learn the luxury of doing good. 

But me, not destined such delights to share. 
My prime of life in wandering spent and care, — 
Impelled, with steps unceasing, to pursue , 25 

Some fleeting good that mocks me with the view, — 
That, like the circle bounding earth and skies, 
Allures from far, yet, as I follow, flies ; 
My fortune leads to traverse realms alone, 
And find no spot of all the world my own. 30 

Even now, where Alpine solitudes ascend, 
I sit me down a pensive hour to spend ; 
And placed on high above the storm's career. 
Look downward where an hundred realms appear — 
Lakes, forests, cities, plains extending wide, 35 

The pomp of kings, the shepherd's humbler pride. 

When thus Creation's charms around combine, 
Amidst the store should thankless pride repine ? 
Say, should the philosophic mind disdain 
That good which makes each humbler bosom vain ? 40 

Let school-taught pride dissemble all it can. 
These little things are great to little man ; 
And wiser he, whose sympathetic mind 
Exults in all the good of all mankind. 

Ye glittering towns, with wealth and splendor crowned ; 45 
Ye fields, where summer spreads profusion round ; 
Ye lakes, whose vessels catch the busy gale ; 
Ye bending swains, that dress the flowery vale ; 
For me your tributary stores combine : 
Creation's heir, the world, the world is mine ! 50 

As some lone miser visiting his store. 
Bends at his treasure, counts, recounts it o'er; 
Hoards after hoards his rising raptures fill. 



THE TRAVELLER. 43 

Yet still he sighs, for hoards are wanting still ; 

Thus to my breast alternate passions rise, 55 

Pleased with each good that Heaven to man supplies : 

Yet oft a sigh prevails, and sorrows fall, 

To see the hoard of human bliss so small ; 

And oft I wish amidst the scene to find 

Some spot to real happiness consigned, 60 

Where my worn soul, each wandering hope at rest, 

May gather bliss to see my fellows blest. 

But where to tind that happiest spot below 
Who can direct, when all pretend to know ? 
The shuddering tenant of the frigid zone 65 

Boldly proclaims that happiest spot his own ; 
Extols the treasures of his stormy seas. 
And his long nights of revelry and ease : 
The naked negro, panting at the line. 
Boasts of his golden sands and palmy wine, 70 

Basks in the glare, or stems the tepid wave, 
And thanks his gods for all the good they gave. 

Such is the patriot's boast where'er we roam ; 
His first, best country ever is at home. 
And yet, perhaps, if countries we compare, 75 

And estimate the blessings which they share. 
Though patriots flatter, still shall wisdom find 
An equal portion dealt to all mankind; 
As different good, by art or nature given. 
To different nations makes their blessings even. 80 

Nature, a mother kind alike to all, 
Still grants her bliss at labor's earnest call ; 
With food as well the peasant is supplied 
On Idra's cliff as Arno's shelvy side ; 
And though the rocky-crested summits frown, 85 

These rocks by custom turn to beds of down. 



44 GOLDSMITH. 

From art more various are the blessings sent — 

Wealth, commerce, honor, liberty, content. 

Yet these each other's power so strong contest, 

That either seems destructive of the rest. 90 

Where wealth and freedom reign, contentment fails, 

And honor sinks where commerce long prevails. 

Hence every state, to one loved blessing prone. 

Conforms and models life to that alone. 

Each to the favorite happiness attends, 95 

And spurns the plan that aims at other ends : 

Till, carried to excess in each domain, 

This favorite good begets peculiar pain. 

But let us try these truths with closer eyes, 
And trace them through the prospect as it lies : lOO 

Here for a while my proper cares resigned. 
Here let me sit in sorrow for mankind ; 
Like yon neglected shrub at random cast. 
That shades the steep, and sighs at every blast. 

Far to the right, where Apennine ascends, 105 

Bright as the summer, Italy extends : 
Its uplands sloping deck the mountain's side, 
Woods over woods in gay theatric pride ; 
While oft some temple's mouldering tops between 
With venerable grandeur mark the scene. llO 

Could nature's bounty satisfy the breast, 
The sons of Italy were surely blest. 
Whatever fruits in different climes are found. 
That proudly rise or humbly court the ground ; 
Whatever blooms in torrid tracts appear, 115 

Whose bright succession decks the varied year ; 
Whatever sweets salute the northern sky 
With vernal lives, that blossom but to die ; 
These, here disporting, own the kindred soil. 



THE TRAVELLER. 45 

Nor ask luxuriance from the planter's toil ; 120 

While sea-born gales their gelid wings expand 
To winnow fragrance round the smiling land. 

But small the bliss that sense alone bestows, 
And sensual bliss is all the nation knows. 
In florid beauty groves and fields appear ; 125 

Man seems the only growth that dwindles here. 
Contrasted faults through all his manners reign : 
Though poor, luxurious ; though submissive, vain ; 
Though grave, yet trifling ; zealous, yet untrue ; 
And even in penance planning sins anew. 130 

All evils here contaminate the mind 
That opulence departed leaves behind ; 
For wealth was theirs, not far removed the date, 
When commerce proudly flourished through the state ; 
At her command the palace learned to rise, 135 

Again the long-fallen column sought the skies. 
The canvas glowed, beyond e'en nature warm, 
The pregnant quarry teemed with human form ; 
Till, more unsteady than the southern gale. 
Commerce on other shores displayed her sail ; 140 

While nought remained of all that riches gave. 
But towns unmanned, and lords without a slave : 
And late the nation found with fruitless skill 
Its former strength was but plethoric ill. 

Yet still the loss of wealth is here supplied 145 

By arts, the splendid wrecks of former pride ; 
From these the feeble heart and long-fallen mind 
An easy compensation seem to find. 
Here may be seen, in bloodless pomp arrayed. 
The pasteboard triumph and the cavalcade, 150 

Processions formed for piety and love, 
A mistress or a saint in every grove. 



46 GOLDSMITH. 

By sports like these are all their cares beguiled ; 

The sports of children satisfy the child. 

Each nobler aim, repressed by long control, 155 

Now sinks at last, or feebly mans the soul ; 

While low delights, succeeding fast behind, 

In happier meanness occupy the mind : 

As in those domes where Caesars once bore sway. 

Defaced by time and tottering in decay, 160 

There in the ruin, heedless of the dead, 

The shelter-seeking peasant builds his shed ; 

And, wondering man could want the larger pile. 

Exults, and owns his cottage with a smile. 

My soul, turn from them, turn we to survey 165 

Where rougher climes a nobler race display. 
Where the bleak Swiss their storniy mansion tread, 
And force a churlish soil for scanty bread. 
No product here the barren hills afford 
But man and steel, the soldier and his sword ; 170 

No vernal blooms their torpid rocks array. 
But winter lingering chills the lap of May ; 
No zephyr fondly sues the mountain's breast. 
But meteors glare, and stormy glooms invest. 

Yet still, even here, content can spread a charm, 175 
Bedress the clime, and all its rage disarm. 
Though poor the peasant's hut, his feasts though small, 
He sees his little lot the lot of all ; 
Sees no contiguous palace rear its head 
To shame the meanness of his humble shed ; 180 

No costly lord the sumptuous banquet deal 
To make him loathe his vegetable meal ; 
But calm, and bred in ignorance and toil, 
Each wish contracting fits him to the soil. 
Cheerful at morn he wakes from short repose, 185 



THE TRAVELLER. 47 

Breasts the keen air, and carols as he goes ; 

With patient angle trolls the finny deep ; 

Or drives his venturous plough-share to the steep ; 

Or seeks the den where snow-tracks mark the way, 

And drags the struggling savage into day. 190 

At night returning, every labor sped. 

He sits him down the monarch of a shed ; 

Smiles by his cheerful fire, and round surveys 

His children's looks, that brighten at the blaze ; 

While his loved partner, boastful of her hoard, 195 

Displays her cleanly platter on the board : 

And haply too some pilgrim, thither led, 

With many a tale repays the nightly bed. 

Thus every good his native wilds impart, 
Imprints the patriot passion on his heart ; 200 

And e'en those ills that round his mansion rise 
Enhance the bliss his scanty fund supplies. 
Dear is that shed to which his soul conforms. 
And dear that hill which lifts him to the storms ; 
And as a child, when scaring sounds molest, 205 

Clings close and closer to the mother's breast. 
So the loud torrent and the whirlwind's roar 
But bind him to his native mountains more. 

Such are the charms to barren states assigned ; 
Their wants but few, their wishes all confined. 210 

Yet let them only share the praises due : 
If few their wants, their pleasures are but few ; 
For every want that stimulates the breast 
Becomes a source of pleasure when redrest. 
Hence from such lands each pleasing science flies 215 
That first excites desire, and then supplies ; 
Unknown to them, when sensual pleasures cloy, 
To fill the languid pause Avitli finer joy ; 



48 GOLDSMITH. 

Unknown those powers that raise the soul to flame, 
Catch every nerve and vibrate through the frame. 220 

Their level life is but a smouldering fire, 
Unquenched by want, unfanned by strong desire ; 
Unfit for raptures, or, if raptures cheer 
On some high festival of once a year. 
In wild excess the vulgar breast takes fire, 225 

Till, buried in debauch, the bliss expire. 

But not their joys alone thus coarsely flow : 
Their morals, like their pleasures, are but low ; 
Por, as refinement stops, from sire to son 
Unaltered, unimproved, the manners run, 230 

And love's and friendship's finely pointed dart 
Fall blunted from each indurated heart. 
Some sterner virtues o'er the mountain's breast 
May sit, like falcons cowering on the nest; 
But all the gentler morals, such as play 235 

Through life's more cultured walks, and charm the way, 
These, far dispersed, on timorous pinions fly. 
To sport and flutter in a kinder sky. 

To kinder skies, where gentler manners reign, 
I turn ; and France displays her bright domain. 240 

Gay, sprightly land of mirth and social ease. 
Pleased with thyself, whom all the world can please, 
How often have I led thy sportive choir. 
With tuneless pipe beside the murmuring Loire ! 
Where shading elms along the margin grew, 245 

And freshened from the wave the zephyr flew ; 
And haply, though my harsh touch, faltering still, 
But mocked all tune, and marred the dancer's skill ; 
Yet would the village praise my wondrous power, 
And dance, forgetful of the noon-tide hour. 250 

Alike all ages. Dames of ancient days 



THE TRAVELLER. 49 

Have led their children through the mirthful maze, 
Aud the gay grandsire, skilled in gestic lore, 
Has frisked beneath the burden of threescore. 

So blessed a life these thoughtless realms display ; 255 
Thus idly busy rolls their world away. 
Theirs are those arts that mind to mind endear, 
For honor forms the social temper here : 
Honor, that praise which real merit gains, 
Or even imaginary worth obtains, 26U 

Here passes current : paid from hand to hand, 
It shifts in splendid traffic round the land : 
From courts to camps, to cottages, it strays, 
And all are taught an avarice of praise. 
They please, are pleased ; they give to get esteem ; 265 
Till, seeming blessed, they grow to what they seem. 

But while this softer art their bliss supplies. 
It gives their follies also room to rise ; 
For praise too dearly loved, or warmly sought, 
Enfeebles all internal strength of thought, 270 

And the weak soul within itself unblest, 
Leans for all pleasure on another's breast. 
Hence ostentation here, v/ith tawdry art, 
Pants for the vulgar praise which fools impart; 
Here vanity assumes her pert grimace, 275 

And trims her robes of frieze with copper lace; 
Here beggar pride defrauds her daily cheer. 
To boast one splendid banquet once a year ; 
The mind still turns where shifting fashion draws, 
ISTor weighs the solid worth of self-applause. 280 

To men of other minds my fancy flies. 
Embosomed in the deep where Holland lies. 
Methinks her patient sons before me stand. 
Where the broad ocean leans against the land ; 



50 GOLDSMITH. 

And, sedulous to stop the coming tide, 285 

Lift the tall rampire's artificial pride. 

Onward, methinks, and diligently slow, 

The firm connected bulwark seems to grow ; 

Spreads its long arms amidst the watery roar, 

Scoops out an empire, and usurps the shore — 290 

While the pent ocean, rising o'er the pile. 

Sees an amphibious world beneath him smile ; 

The slow canal, the yellow blossomed vale, 

The willow-tufted bank, the gliding sail, 

The crowded mart, the cultivated plain, — 295 

A new creation rescued from his reign. 

Thus while around the wave-subjected soil 
Impels the native to repeated toil. 
Industrious habits in each bosom reign. 
And industry begets a love of gain. 300 

Hence all the good from opulence that springs. 
With all those ills superfluous treasure brings, 
Are here displayed. There much-loved wealth imparts 
Convenience, plenty, elegance, and arts ; 
But view them closer, craft and fraud appear, 305 

E'en liberty itself is bartered here. 
At gold's superior charms all freedom flies ; 
The needy sell it, and the rich man buys ; 
A land of tyra,nts, and a den of slaves, 
Here wretches seek dishonorable graves, 310 

And calmly bent, to servitude conform, 
Dull as their lakes that slumber in the storm. 
Heavens ! how unlike their Belgic sires of old — 
Eough, poor, content, ungovernably bold, 
War in each breast, and freedom on each brow : 315 

How much unlike the sons of Britain now ! 

Fired at the sound, my genius spreads her wing. 



THE TRAVELLER. 51 

And flies where Britain courts the western spring; 

Where lawns extend that scorn Arcadian pride, 

And brighter streams than famed Hydaspes glide. 320 

There all around the gentlest breezes stray ; 

There gentle music melts on every spray ; 

Creation's mildest charms are there combined, 

Extremes are only in the master's mind ! 

Stern o'er each bosom reason holds her state, 325 

With daring aims irregularly great ; 

Pride in their port, defiance in their eye, 

I see the lords of human kind pass by ; 

Intent on high designs, a thoughtful band. 

By forms unfashioned, fresh from nature's hand, 330 

Fierce in their native hardiness of soul. 

True to imagined right, above control, 

While even the peasant boasts these rights to scan, 

And learns to venerate himself as man. 334 

Thine, Freedom, thine the blessings pictured here ; 
Thine are those charms that dazzle and endear ; 
Too blessed, indeed, were such without alloy : 
But fostered even by freedom ills annoy : 
That independence Britons prize too high 
Keeps man from man, and breaks the social tie ; 340 
The self-dependent lordlings stand alone. 
All claims that bind and sweeten life unknown. 
Here, by the bonds of nature feebly held. 
Minds combat minds, repelling and repelled ; 
Ferments arise, imprisoned factions roar, 345 

Repressed ambition struggles round her shore. 
Till, overwrought, the general system feels 
Its motions stop, or frenzy fire the wheels. 

Nor this the worst. As nature's ties decay. 
As duty, love, and honor fail to sway, 350 



52 GOLDSMITH. 

Fictitious bonds, the bonds of wealth and law, 

Still gather strength, and force unwilling awe. 

Hence all obedience bows to these alone. 

And talent sinks, and merit weeps unknown : 354 

Till time may come, when, stripped of all her charms, 

The land of scholars and the nurse of arms. 

Where noble stems transmit the patriot flame. 

Where kings have toiled and poets wrote for fame. 

One sink of level avarice shall lie. 

And scholars, soldiers, kings, unhonored die. 360 

Yet think not, thus when freedom's ills I state, 
I mean to flatter kings, or court the great. 
Ye powers of truth that bid my soul aspire, 
Far from my bosom drive the low desire ! 
And thou, fair Freedom, taught alike to feel 365 

The rabble's rage and tyrant's angry steel ; 
Thou transitory flower, alike undone 
By proud contempt or favor's fostering sun, 
Still may thy blooms the changeful clime endure ! 
I only would repress them to secure : 370 

For just experience tells, in every soil. 
That those who think must govern those that toil ; 
And all that freedom's highest aims can reach 
Is but to lay proportioned loads on each. 
Hence, should one order disproportioned grow, 375 

Its double weight must ruin all below. 

O then how blind to all that truth requires, 
Who think it freedom when a part aspires ! 
Calm is my soul, nor apt to rise in arms. 
Except when fast approaching danger warms ; 380 

But when contending chiefs blockade the throne, 
Contracting regal power to stretch their own, 
When I behold a factious band agree 



THE TRAVELLER. 53 

To call it freedom when themselves are free ; 

Each wanton judge new penal statutes draw, 385 

Laws grind the poor, and rich men rule the law, 

The wealth of climes where savage nations roam 

Pillaged from slaves to purchase slaves at home ; 

Fear, pity, justice, indignation start, 

Tear off reserve, and bare my swelling heart ; 390 

Till half a patriot, half a coward grown, 

I fly from petty tyrants to the throne. 

Yes, brother, curse with me that baleful hour 
When first ambition struck at regal power ; 
And thus polluting honor in its source, 395 

Gave wealth to sway the mind with double force. 
Have we not seen, round Britain's peopled shore, 
Her useful sons exchanged for useless ore, 
Seen all her triumphs but destruction haste. 
Like flaring tapers brightening as they waste ? 400 

Seen opulence, her grandeur to maintain. 
Lead stern depopulation in her train. 
And over fields where scattered hamlets rose 
In barren solitary pomp repose ? 

Have we not seen at pleasure's lordly call 405 

The smiling long-frequented village fall ? 
Beheld the duteous son, the sire decayed, 
The modest matron, and the blushing maid. 
Forced from their homes, a melancholy train. 
To traverse climes beyond the western main ; 410 

Where wild Oswego spreads her swamps around. 
And Niagara stuns with thundering sound ? 

Even now, perhaps, as there some pilgrim strays 
Through tangled forests and through dangerous ways. 
Where beasts with man divided empire claim, 415 

And the brown Indian marks with murderous aim ; 



54 GOLDSMITH. 

There, while above the giddy tempest flies, 
And all around distressful yells arise, 
The pensive exile, bending with his woe. 
To stop too fearful, and too faint to go, 420 

Casts a long look where England's glories shine, 
And bids his bosom sympathize with mine. 
Vain, very vain, my weary search to find 
That bliss which only centres in the mind. 
Why have I strayed from pleasure and repose, 425 

To seek a good each government bestows ? 
In every government, though terrors reign. 
Though tyrant kings or tyrant laws restrain. 
How small, of all that human hearts endure. 
That part which laws or kings can cause or cure ; 430 
Still to ourselves in every place consigned, 
Our own felicity we make or find : 
With secret course, which no loud storms annoy, 
Glides the smooth current of domestic joy. 
The lifted axe, the agonizing wheel, 435 

Luke's iron crown, and Damiens' bed of steel. 
To men remote from power but rarely known. 
Leave reason, faith, and conscience all our own. 



THE DESERTED VILLAGE. 



Sweet Auburn ! loveliest village of the plain, 
Where health and plenty cheered the laboring swain. 
Where smiling spring its earliest visit paid, 
And parting summer's lingering blooms delayed: 
Dear lovely bowers of innocence and ease, 5 

Seats of my youth, when every sport could please, 
How often have I loitered o'er thy green. 
Where humble happiness endeared each scene, 
How often have I paused on every charm, 
The sheltered cot, the cultivated farm, lo 

The never-failing brook, the busy mill, 
The decent church that topped the neighboring hill, 
The hawthorn bush, with seats beneath the shade, 
For talking age and whispering lovers made ! 
How often have I blessed the coming day, 15 

When toil remitting lent its turn to play. 
And all the village train, from labor free. 
Led up their sports beneath the spreading tree 
While many a pastime circled in the shade, 
The young contending as the old surveyed ; 20 

And many a gambol frolicked o'er the ground. 
And sleights of art and feats of strength went round ; 
And still, as each repeated pleasure tired, 
Succeeding sports the mirthful band inspired ; 

55 



56 GOLDSMITH. 

The dancing pair that simply sought renown 25 

By holding out to tire each other down ; • 

The swain mistrustless of his smutted face, 

While secret laughter tittered round the place ; 

The bashful virgin's sidelong looks of love, 

The matron's glance that would those looks reprove. 30 

These were thy charms, sweet village ! sports like these. 

With sweet succession, taught even toil to please ; 

These round thy bowers their cheerful influence shed : 

These were thy charms — but all these charms are fled. 

Sweet smiling village, loveliest of the lawn, 35 

Thy sports are fled, and all thy charms withdrawn ; 
Amidst thy bowers the tyrant's hand is seen, 
And desolation saddens all thy green : 
One only master grasps the Avhole domain. 
And half a tillage stints thy smiling plain. 40 

No more thy glassy brook reflects the day. 
But, choked with sedges, works its weedy way ; 
Along thy glades, a solitary guest, 
The hollow-sounding bittern guards its nest ; 
Amidst thy desert walks the lapwing flies, 45 

And tires their echoes with unvaried cries. 
Sunk are thy bowers in shapeless ruin all. 
And the long grass o'ertops the mouldering wall ; 
And trembling, shrinking from the spoiler's hand, 
Far, far away thy children leave the land. 50 

111 fares the land, to hastening ills a prey. 
Where wealth accumulates, and men decay : 
Princes and lords may flourish, or may fade — 
A breath can make them, as a breath has made : 
But a bold peasantry, their country's pride, 55 

When once destroyed, can never be supplied. 

A time there was, ere England's griefs began, 



THE DESERTED VILLAGE. 57 

When every rood of ground maintained its man ; 
For him light labor spread her wholesome store, 
Just gave what life required, but gave no more : (50 

His best companions, innocence and health, 
And his best riches, ignorance of wealth. 

But times are altered ; trade's unfeeling train 
Usurp the land and dispossess the swain ; 
Along the lawn, where scattered hamlets rose, 65 

Unwieldy w^ealth and cumbrous pomp repose, 
And every want to opulence allied, 
And every pang that folly pays to pride. 
These gentle hours that plenty bade to bloom, 
Those calm desires that asked but little room, 70 

Those healthful sports that graced the peaceful scene, 
Lived in each look, and brightened all the green ; 
These, far departing, seek a kinder shore, 
And rural mirth and manners are no more. 

Sweet Auburn ! parent of the blissful hour, 75 

Thy glades forlorn confess the tja'ant's ]30wei'. 
Here, as I take my solitary rounds 
Amidst thy tangling walks and ruined grounds, 
And, many a year elapsed, return to view 
Where once the cottage stood, the hawthorn grew, 80 
Bemembrance wakes Avith all her busy traiu. 
Swells at my breast, and turns the past to pain. 

In all my wanderings round this world of care ; 
In all m.j griefs — and God has given my share — 
I still had hopes, my latest hours to crown, 85 

Amidst these humble bowers to lay me down; 
To husband out life's taper at the close. 
And keep the flame from wasting by repose. 
I still had hopes, for pride attends us still, 
Amidst the swains to show my book-learned skill, 90 



58 GOLDSMITH. 

Around my fire an evening group to draw, 

And tell of all I felt, and all I saw ; 

And as a hare whom hounds and horns pursue, 

Pants to the place from whence at first she flew, 

I still had hopes, my long vexations j)ast, 95 

Here to return — and die at home at last. 

blessed retirement, friend to life's decline, 
Retreats from care, that never must be mine, 
How happy he who crowns in shades like these 
A youth of labor with an age of ease ; 100 

Who quits a world where strong temptations try, 
And, since 'tis hard to combat, learns to fly ! 
For him no wretches, born to work and weep, 
Explore the mine, or tempt the dangerous deep; 
No surly porter stands in guilty state, 105 

To spurn imploring famine from the gate ; 
But on he moves to meet his latter end. 
Angels around befriending virtue's friend ; 
Bends to the grave with unperceived decay, 
While resignation gently slopes the way ; 110 

And, all his prospects brightening to the last. 
His heaven commences ere the world be past ! 

Sweet was the sound, when oft at evening's close, 
Up yonder hill the village murmur rose. 
There, as I passed with careless steps and slow, 115 

The mingling notes came softened from below ; 
The swain resx^onsive as the milk-maid sung. 
The sober herd that lowed to meet their young. 
The noisy geese that gabbled o'er the ^dooI, 
The playful children just let loose from school, 120 

The watch-dog's voice that bayed the whispering wind. 
And the loud laugh that spoke the vacant mind ; — 
These all in sweet confusion sought the shade, 



THE DESERTED VILLAGE. 59 

And filled each pause the nightingale had made. 

But now the sounds of population fail, 125 

No cheerful murmurs fluctuate in the gale, 

No busy steps the grass-grown footway tread, 

For all the bloomy flush of life is fled. 

All but yon widowed, solitary thing, 

That feebly bends beside the plashy spring : 130 

She, wretched matron, forced in age, for bread. 

To strip the brook with mantling cresses spread, 

To pick her wintry faggot from the thorn. 

To seek her nightly shed, and weep till morn ; 

She only left of all the harmless train, 135 

The sad historian of the pensive plain ! 

Near yonder copse, where once the garden smiled. 
And still where many a garden flower grows wild ; 
There, where a few torn shrubs the place disclose. 
The village preacher's modest mansion rose. 140 

A man he was to all the country dear. 
And passing rich with forty pounds a year; 
Kemote from towns he ran his godly race. 
Nor e'er had changed, nor Avished to change his place ; 
Unpractised he to fawn, or seek for power, 145 

By doctrines fashioned to the varying hour ; 
Far other aims his heart had learned to prize. 
More skilled to raise the wretched than to rise. 
His house was known to all the vagrant train ; 
He chid their wanderings but relieved their pain ; 150 

The long-remembered beggar was his guest. 
Whose beard descending swept his aged breast ; 
The ruined spendthrift, now no longer proud. 
Claimed kindred there, and had his claims allowed ; 
The broken soldier kindly bade to stay, 155 

Sat by his fire, and talked the night away. 



60 GOLDSMITH. 

Wept o'er his wounds, or, tales of sorrow done, 
Shouldered his crutch and showed how fields were won. 
Pleased with his guests, the good man learned to glow. 
And quite forgot their vices in their woe ; 160 

Careless their merits or their faults to scan, 
His pity gave ere charity began. 

Thus to relieve the wretched was his pride, 
And e'en his failings leaned to virtue's side ; 
But in his duty prompt at every call, 105 

He watched and wept, he prayed and felt for all ; 
And, as a bird each fond endearment tries 
To tempt its new-fledged offspring to the skies, 
He tried each art, reproved each dull delay. 
Allured to brighter worlds, and led the way. 170 

Beside the bed where parting life was laid, 
And sorrow, guilt, and pain by turns dismayed, 
The reverend champion stood. At his control 
Despair and anguish fled the struggling soul ; 
Comfort came down the trembling wretch to raise, 175 
And his last faltering accents whispered praise. 

At church, with meek and unaffected grace. 
His looks adorned the venerable place ; 
Truth from his lips prevailed with double sway. 
And fools, who came to scoff, remained to pray. 180 

The service past, around the pious man, 
With steady zeal, each honest rustic ran ; 
Even children followed with endearing wile. 
And plucked his gown to share the good man's smile. 
His ready smile a parent's warmth expressed, 185 

Their welfare pleased him, and their cares distressed ; 
To them his heart, his love, his griefs were given. 
But all his serious thoughts had rest in heaven. 
As some tall cliff that lifts its awful form, 



THE DESERTED VILLAGE. 61 

Swells from the vale, and midway leaves the storm, 190 
Though round its breast the rolling clouds are spread, 
Eternal sunshine settles on its head. 

Beside yon straggling fence that skirts the way, 
With blossomed furze unprofitably gay — 
There, in his noisy mansion, skilled to rule, 195 

The village master taught his little school. 
A man severe he was, and stern to view ; 
I knew him well, and every truant knew : 
Well had the boding tremblers learned to trace 
The day's disasters in his morning face ; 200 

Full well they lauglied with counterfeited glee 
At all his jokes, for many a joke had he ; 
Full well the busy whisper circling round 
Conveyed the dismal tidings when he frowned. 
Yet he was kind, or if severe in aught, 205 

The love he bore to learning was in fault. 
The village all declared how much he knew : 
'Twas certain he could write, and cipher, too : 
Lands he could measure, terms and tides presage, 
And even the story ran that he could gauge. 210 

In arguing, too, the parson owned his skill, 
For, even though vanquished, he could argue still ; 
While words of learned length and thundering sound 
Amazed the gazing rustics ranged around ; 
And still they gazed, and still the wonder grew, 215 

That one small head could carry all he knew. 

But past is all his fame. The very spot 
Where many a time he triumphed is forgot. 
Near yonder thorn that lifts its head on high. 
Where once the sign-post caught the passing eye, 220 

Low lies that house where nut-brown draughts inspired. 
Where gray-beard mirth and smiling toil retired. 



62 GOLDSMITH. 

Where village statesmen talked with looks profound, 

And news much older than their ale went round. 

Imagination fondly stoops to trace 225 

The parlor splendors of that festive place : 

The white- washed wall, the nicely sanded floor, 

The varnished clock that clicked behind the door ; 

The chest contrived a double debt to pay, 

A bed by night, a chest of drawers by day ; 230 

The pictures placed for ornament and use, 

The twelve good rules, the royal game of goose ; 

The hearth, except when winter chilled the day, 

With aspen boughs, and flowers and fennel gay ; 

While broken tea-cups, wisely kept for show, 235 

Kanged o'er the chimney, glistened in a row. 

Vain transitory splendors ! could not all 
Reprieve the tottering mansion from its fall ? 
Obscure it sinks, nor shall it more impart 
An hour's importance to the poor man's heart. 240 

Thither no more the peasant shall repair 
To sweet oblivion of his daily care ; 
No more the farmer's news, the barber's tale, 
No more the woodman's ballad shall prevail ; 
No more the smith his dusky brow shall clear, 245 

Relax his ponderous strength, and lean to hear ; 
The host himself no longer shall be found 
Careful to see the mantling bliss go round ; 
Nor the coy maid, half willing to be pressed, 
Shall kiss the cup to pass it to the rest. 250 

Yes ! let the rich deride, the proud disdain. 
These simple blessings of the lowly train, 
To me more dear, congenial to my heart. 
One native charm, than all the gloss of art: 
Spontaneous joys, where nature has its play, 255 



THE DESERTED VILLAGE. 63 

The soul adopts, and owns their first-born sway; 

Ligiitly they frolic o'er the vacant mind, 

Unenvied, unmolested, unconfined. 

But the long pomp, the midnight masquerade, 

With all the freaks of wanton wealth arrayed — 260 

In these, ere triflers half their wish obtain, 

The toiling pleasure sickens into pain ; 

And, even while fashion's brightest arts decoy, 

The heart distrusting asks if this be joy. 

Ye friends to truth, ye statesmen who survey 265 

The rich man's joys increase, the poor's decay, 
'Tis yours to judge how wide the limits stand 
Between a splendid and a happy land. 
Proud swells the tide with loads of freighted ore. 
And shouting folly hails them from her shore ; 270 

Hoards even beyond the miser's wish abound, 
And rich men flock from all the world around. 
Yet count our gains. This wealth is but a name 
That leaves our useful products still the same. 
Not so the loss. The man of wealth and pride 275 

Takes up a space that many poor supplied ; 
Space for his lake, his park's extended bounds, 
Space for his horses, equipage, and hounds : 
The robe that wraps his limbs in silken sloth 
Has robbed the neighboring fields of half their growth ; 
His seat where solitary sports are seen, 281 

Indignant spurns the cottage from the green ; 
Around the world each needful product flies, 
For all the luxuries the world supplies ; 
While thus the land adorned for pleasure all 285 

In barren splendor feebly waits the fall. 

As some fair female unadorned and plain. 
Secure to please while youth confirms her reign, 



64 GOLDSMITH. 

Slights every borrowed charm that dress supplies, 
Nor shares with art the triumph of her eyes ; 290 

. But when those charms are past, for charms are frail, 
When time advances, and when lovers fail. 
She then shines forth, solicitous to bless, 
In all the glaring impotence of dress. 
Thus fares the land by luxury betrayed : 295 

In nature's simplest charms at first arrayed. 
But verging to decline, its splendors rise, 
Its vistas strike, its palaces surprise ; 
While, scourged by famine from the smiling land. 
The mournful peasant leads his humble band, 300 

And while he sinks, without one arm to save. 
The country blooms — a garden and a grave. 

Where then, ah ! where, shall poverty reside, 
To escape the pressure of contiguous pride ? 
If to some common's fenceless limits strayed 305 

He drives his flock to pick the scanty blade, 
Those fenceless fields the sons of wealth divide. 
And even the bare-worn common is denied. 

If to the city sped — what waits him there ? 
To see profusion that he must not share ; 310 

To see ten thousand baneful arts combined 
To pamper luxury and thin mankind ; 
To see those joys the sons of pleasure know, 
Extorted from his fellow-creature's woe. 
Here while the courtier glitters in brocade, 315 

There the pale artist plies the sickly trade ; 
Here while the proud their long-drawn pomps display. 
There the black gibbet glooms beside the way. 
The dome where pleasure holds her midnight reign. 
Here, richly decked, admits the gorgeous train ; 320 

Tumultuous grandeur crowds the blazing square, 



THE DESERTED VILLAGE. 65 

The rattling chariots clash, the torches glare. 

Sure scenes like these no troubles e'er annoy ! 

Sure these denote one universal joy ! 

Are these thy serious thoughts ? — Ah, turn thine eyes 

Where the poor houseless shivering female lies. 326 

She once, perhaps, in village plenty blessed, 

Has wept at tales of innocence distressed ; 

Her modest looks the cottage might adorn, 

Sweet as the primrose peeps beneath the thorn ; 330 

Now lost to all ; her friends, her virtue fled, 

Near her betrayer's door she lays her head, 

And, pinched with cold, and shrinking from the shower, 

With heavy heart deplores that luckless hour, 

AVhen idly first, ambitious of the town, 335 

She left her wheel and robes of country brown. 

Do thine, sweet Auburn, — thine, the loveliest train, 
Do thy fair tribes participate her pain ? 
Even now, perhaps, by cold and hunger led, 
At proud men's doors they ask a little bread ! 340 

Ah, no ! To distant climes, a dreary scene. 
Where half the convex world intrudes between. 
Through torrid tracts with fainting steps they go, 
Where wild Altama murmurs to their woe. 
Far different there from all that charmed before 345 
The various terrors of that horrid shore ; 
Those blazing suns that dart a downward ray, 
And fiercely shed intolerable day ; 
Those matted woods where birds forget to sing ; 
But silent bats in drowsy clusters cling ; 350 

Those poisonous fields with rank luxuriance crowned. 
Where the dark scorx^ion gathers death around ; 
Where at each step the stranger fears to wake 
The rattling terrors of the vengeful snake ; 



6Q GOLDSMITH. 

Where crouching tigers wait their hapless prey, 355 

And savage men more murderous still than they ; 

While oft in whirls the mad tornado flies, 

Mingling the ravaged landscape with the skies. 

Far different these from every former scene, 

The cooling brook, the grassy-vested green, 360 

The breezy covert of the warbling grove, 

That only sheltered thefts of harmless love. 

Good Heaven ! what sorrows gloomed that parting day. 
That called them from their native walks away ; 
When the poor exiles, every pleasure past, 365 

Hung round the bowers, and fondly looked their last, 
And took a long farewell, and wished in vain 
For seats like these beyond the western main. 
And shuddering still to face the distant deep, 
Eeturned and wept, and still returned to weep. 370 

The good old sire the first prepared to go 
To new-found worlds, and wept for others' woe ; 
But for himself, in conscious virtue brave, 
He only wished for worlds beyond the grave. 
His lovely daughter, lovelier in her tears, 375 

The fond companion of his helpless years, 
Silent went next, neglectful of her charms, 
And left a lover's for a father's arms. 
With louder plaints the mother spoke her woes. 
And blessed the cot where every pleasure rose, 380 

And kissed her thoughtless babes with many a tear. 
And clasped them close, in sorrow doubly dear, 
Whilst her fond husband strove to lend relief 
In all the silent manliness of grief. 

luxury ! thou curst by Heaven's decree, 385 

How ill exchanged are things like these for thee ! 
How do thy potions, with insidious joy. 



THE DESERTED VILLAGE. 67 

Diffuse their pleasure only to destroy ! 

Kingdoms, by thee to sickly greatness grown, 

Boast of a florid vigor not their own. 390 

At every draught more large and large they grow, 

A bloated mass of rank unwieldy woe ; 

Till sapped their strength, and every part unsound, 

Down, down they sink, and spread a ruin round. 

Even now the devastation is begun, 395 

And half the business of destruction done ; 
Even now, methinks, as pondering here I stand, 
I see the rural virtues leave the land. 
Down where yon anchoring vessel spreads the sail 
That idly waiting flaps with every gale, 400 

Downward they move, a melancholy band, 
Pass from the shore, and darken all the strand. 
Contented toil, and hospitable care, 
And kind connubial tenderness, are there ; 
And piety, with wishes placed above, 405 

And steady loyalty, and faithful love. 
And thou, sweet Poetry, thou loveliest maid. 
Still first to fly where sensual joys invade ; 
Unfit in these degenerate times of shame 
To catch the heart, or strike for honest fame ; 410 

Dear charming nymph, neglected and decried. 
My shame in crowds, my solitary pride ; 
Thou source of all my bliss, and all my woe, 
That found'st me poor at first, and keep'st me so ; 
Thou guide by which the nobler arts excel, 415 

Thou nurse of every virtue, fare thee well ! 
Farewell, and ! where'er thy voice be tried, 
On Torno's cliffs, or Pambamarca's side. 
Whether where equinoctial fervors glow. 
Or winter wraps the polar world in snow, 420 



68 GOLDSMITH. 

Still let tliy voice, prevailing over time, 

Redress the rigors of the inclement clime ; 

Aid slighted truth with thy persuasive strain ; 

Teach erring man to spurn the rage of gain ; 

Teach him, that states of native strength possessed, 425 

Though very poor, may still be very blessed ; 

That trade's proud empire hastes to swift decay. 

As ocean sweeps the labored mole away ; 

While self-dependent power can time defy. 

As rocks resist the billows and the sky. 430 



ALEXANDER POPE. 

1688-17M. 



Apart from his career as an author, the life of Alexander Pope 
was uneventful. He was born May 21, 1688, in London. A few 
years later his father, a successful merchant, retired from business 
and went to Binfield, and later to Chiswick, where he died in 1717. 
The next year Pope, with his mother, went to live at Twickenham, 
twelve miles from London. The Twickenham villa stood in a park 
of some five acres, in the adornment of which he spent much time 
and money, and found one of his few diversions. Here was the 
famous grotto, decorated with shells and curious bits of stone, 
coral, and crystal, — a place well known and nuich admired by the 
wdts and celebrities of the day. " Garth, Arbuthnot, Bolingbroke, 
Peterborough, Swift, the most brilliant company of friends that 
the world has ever seen," were frequent visitors. An occasional 
trij) to London was the only separation from his mother that his 
filial devotion permitted; for Pope was a good son. In his ven- 
eration of his mother he becomes lovable, genuine, true. 

" Me let the tender office long engage 
To rock the cradle of reposing age, 
With lenient arts extend a mother's breath, 
Make languor smile, and soothe the bed of death, 
Explore the thought, explain the asking eye. 
And keep awhile one parent from the sky." 

Such words come from the heart, and gain our aifections, as his 
nice antitheses and rhetorical polish command our admiration and 
applause. Pope's mother died in 1733 ; " with her death the most 

69 



70 POPE. 

ennobling influence faded from the poet's life." He survived his 
mother eleven years, — years crowded with literary labors and self- 
ish plotting. His death was so peaceful that those who were 
watching him did not know the moment when the end came. 

Pope had no boyhood days. From his infancy he was devoted to 
literature, and he spent in reading and study the time that most 
boys are playing out of doors. He was sickly and deformed ; so 
hunch-backed that he was called "the interrogation point"; a 
dwarf less than four feet high ; and so weak that he could 
neither dress nor undress without help. He was so sensitive to 
cold that he had to be wrapped in flannels and furs, and wore 
three pairs of stockings. He had to be laced in stays, and could 
scarcely support himself until they were put on by his attendants. 
His life was " one long disease." He had no sports, no days of 
frolicsome mirth or the simple delight of boyish pranks. How 
indomitable the spirit that could triumph over such defects of the 
body! 

The education of the poet was largely in his own hands. His 
parents were Roman Catholics, and for this reason Pope was de- 
barred from the universities and all public offices. At an early 
age he was instructed by the family priest. Then he was sent to 
a Romish seminary, whence he was expelled in a short time for 
lampooning one of the teachers. A series of private tutors fol- 
lowed, but with little profit to the pupil. At twelve he decided to 
direct his own education, and formed a plan of study which was 
faithfully carried out, though his sole incitement was his own 
desire for excellence. He read widely, dipped into authors here 
and there, and studied English, French, Greek, and Latin with a 
zeal that nearly ended his life. Before he was fifteen, he had 
written an Ode on Solitude, a tragedy (acted by his playmates), 
and an epic of nearly four thousand lines. He was a most pre- 
cocious child, fired with ambition to win success in the world of 
letters; and to the attainment of this end all his study and labor 
were conformed. From his earliest days he was fond of Spen- 
ser, AValler, and Sandys. Dryden, however, was his great master. 
Pope and Gray both declared that they learned versification wholly 
from the works of the great poet of the Restoration period. 



POPE. 71 

The choice of a profession was for Pope a limited one. His 
religion and his health debarred him from every public career, and 
condemned him to a secluded life. It was, therefore, a hajjpy 
coincidence of necessity and preference that led him to adopt 
literature. This field attracted hijn, and held forth fair prospects 
of success. His first venture, the Pastorals, was published in 1700, 
and gained an amount of praise that this latter day finds it diffi- 
cult to understand. Leslie Stephen calls them " school-boy exer- 
cises." The poet himself and the critics of his day regarded them 
as brilliant compositions of the highest poetic M'orth. The student 
can easily satisfy his own mind of the merits of these poems — a 
course that is always wisest and best. 

Six years after his first publication, Pope was regarded as the 
greatest living poet. In this interval, the Essay on Criticism 
(1711), Rape of the Lock (1712, revised and republished 1714), 
Windsor Forest (1713), and the Temple of Fame (1715) — a para- 
phrase of Chaucer's House of Fame — were published. Comment 
on the Essay will precede the notes on that poem. The Rape of 
the Lock is a mock heroic, and the best poetical burlesque in our 
language. The original draft of the poem did not contain the 
Rosicrucian sylphs and gnomes that add so much to the grace and 
beauty of the present form. It was written to restore peace be- 
tween the families of Lord Petre and a Miss Fermor. The young 
nobleman had offended by stealing a lock of the lady's hair, 
and her friends were not slow in expressing their indignation at 
his insolence. It was suggested by Caryll that a poem which 
would turn the affair into friendly ridicule might avert the im- 
pending unpleasantness between the two families. Pope accord- 
ingly set about the task, and the result was the most brilliant 
trifle in our literature. The effort was warmly praised on all 
sides, and " it has ever since held a kind of recognized supremacy 
amongst the productions of the drawing-room muse." Windsor 
Forest is less noteworthy. Nature and Pope never were good 
friends. His descriptions made the forests populous with pagan 
gods and goddesses, sanctioned by Spenser and Milton, and dragged 
from their Olympian abodes by the Pegasus of innumerable later 
versifiers. All is conventional; the warm beauty of nature could 



72 POPE. 

not appeal to the frigid formality of the Augustan. Of the Temple 
of Fame, Dr. Johnson declared that every part is splendid; Steele 
said it had a thousand beauties. It is, however, no more com- 
mendable than the other " translations " of Chaucer, and is as 
deservedly forgotten. 

The first period of Pope's literary activity, the period to which 
belong the poems just enumerated, ended with the production, in 
1717, of two poems of a seHtimental nature — Eloisa to Ahelard 
and Elegy to the Memory of an Unfortunate Lady. In these. Pope 
comes as near to true pathos as he ever did. Of genuine feeling he 
had but little ; the most careful search will meet with scant reward. 
Goldsmith, Gray, or Cowper, in a single couplet, touch the heart 
more deeply than all the rhetorical pathos that Pope so carefully 
elaborated. Space makes quotation impracticable, but every stu- 
dent of Pope should read these poems. In them is found as "grace- 
ful an expression of poetical rhetoric as can be found in his verse." 

The second period gave us his Iliad, — by many considered his 
most important conti'ibution to our literature. The work was 
begun at the suggestion of Sir William Trumbull, an early friend 
of the poet. Swift promoted the scheme in a practical manner by 
securing subscriptions to the amount of a thousand guineas before 
the book was printed, and by introducing Pope to St. John, Atter- 
bury, and Harley, influential Tories of that time. Addison's friend 
Tickell had begun a translation, but withdrew his announcement 
after the publication of Pope's first volume. The incident occa- 
sioned some hostility between Addison and Pope, and was the 
cause of the satire published some years later in the Epistle to 
Dr. Arhutlinot. Whatever Pope may have thought, — and unfortu- 
nately he cannot be believed, — he had no reason to complain. 
His Homer v,'iis praised by all, Whigs and Tories alike, and brought 
the translator a fortune. It is estimated that his series of the Iliad 
and Odyssey brought him £9000, a sum that made him independent 
for life. Fully as satisfactory to his vanity was the applause that 
greeted his venture. It made him the undisputed literary chief 
of the time. There were, however, some who did not concur in 
the popular judgment. Bentley, the greatest classical scholar of 
the time, said to the poet : " A very pretty poem, Mr. Pope, but 



POPE. 73 

you must not call it Homer." It is with this opinion that pos- 
terity agrees. Read as a narrative, Pope's ILkid runs so smoothly 
that it carries us through with no sense of weariness. Every school- 
boy will read it with pleasure, and this of itself is high praise. On 
the other hand, it lacks the simplicity and directness of the origi- 
nal; it is, as one critic has expressed it, " Homer in a dress suit." 
Of its value to English versification, the opinion of Johnson, who 
said "it tuned the English tongue," may be set against that of 
Coleridge, who assents to this, but concludes that " the translation 
of Homer has been one of the main sources af that ' pseudo-poetic ' 
diction " which he and Wordsworth struggled to put out of credit. 
Gray, who was a great scholar and a great poet, declared that no 
other version would ever equal Pope's. Three English translators 
preceded and many in prose and verse have followed ; but among 
them all Pope has held his own and is most widely read. 

After completing his Homer, Pope essayed to edit Shakespeare. 
For this undertaking he was poorly qualified and his failure was 
complete. He knew little of Elizabethan literature, he had no 
true sympathy with his author, and the methodical labors of an 
editor were not to his taste. The Shakespeare was published in six 
volumes in 1725. Theobald, a year later, published a criticism of 
Pope's work, in which he pointed out some of " the many errors 
committed as well as unamended by Mr. Pope." In this review, 
Theobald, though he praised Pope as a poet, made some strictures 
on him as a commentator. A much severer castigation was richly 
merited, but Pope, the most irritable and revengeful of authors, 
bitterly resented Theobald's criticism. This incident was the im- 
mediate occasion of the Danciad (1728), in which Poj^e vented his 
wrath on a host of minor authors against whom his splenetic spirit 
had a real or fancied grievance. Theobald is made the hero, — 
supreme dunce in the realm of dulness. The poem is full of the 
coarsest abuse, and illustrates Johnson's comment that Pope has a 
strange delight in the physically disgusting. In the midst of the 
vilest billingsgate, he assumes a lofty moral tone and justifies him- 
self by the necessities of the case : in the interests of all mankind 
he must reprove the foolish antics of the dunces, among whom he 
places the scholar Bentley, the eloquent Whitfield, and the brilliant 



74 POPE. 

Defoe. The poem is the very refinement of vicious cruelty. Many 
of those attacked would have been long since forgotten had not 
Pope's malignity dragged them from obscurity and wretchedness 
to be spitted for the fire of his revenge. The literary merit of the 
Dunciad consists in the happy strokes that here and there adorn its 
merciless pages. No part of it can be read with pleasure save a 
few lines at the end. The writers attacked — in many instances 
with no provocation — resented his aspersions, and the War with 
the Dunces followed. To defend himself and to provoke them 
still more, Pope started the Grub Street Journal, which existed eight 
years. It was characteristic of the poet that he vigorously denied 
all connection with this journal. He never scrupled to hazard a 
lie whenever it might benefit himself or injure those he considered 
his enemies. 

The publication of the Dunciad marks a turning-point in Pope's 
career. Thenceforth his writing was of a different and more worthy 
style. The Essay on Alan, a philosophical poem in four parts, was 
published anonymously in 1733-34, but was acknowledged in a 
short time. The poem is Pope's most ambitious attempt, and 
vows no less a purpose than that of Milton's Paradise Lost to vindi- 
cate the ways of God to man. The philosophy is defective ; indeed, 
the poet seems to have no settled conviction of his own. He was 
in name a Roman Catholic, in reality a deist, and in practice his 
opinions were those that happened to be current at the time. Read 
as an exposition of philosophy, the poem is unsatisfactory. " Sus- 
tained reasoning is entirely beyond his power," The poetry, how- 
ever, is in his best st3'le, and amply rewards the reading. It is not 
a poem that is read and re-read, but there are many meteoric flashes 
whose brilliancy fascinates and compels more than a second perusal. 
The Essay is said to be a poetic presentation of Bolingbroke's views. 
This we may safely believe, for Pope acknowledges his indebted- 
ness, and it was far from his custom to yield to another any praise 
that he himself might claim. 

The Moral Essays and Imitations from Horace were Pope's last 
and best work. The personal enmities and intense bitterness that 
point so many of his verses are displayed, but the field is wider, 
and the subjects demand a more versatile treatment. Warburton 



POPE. 75 

says that by the original plan the Moral Essays, four in number,^ 
were to have been included in the Essay on Man, to which would 
be added w^hat was published as the fourth book of the Dunciad. 
Luckily, this project never passed beyond a plan. The first epistle 
develops Pope's theory of a ruling passion, and affords further 
evidence of a statement already made — that he could not sustain 
an argument. The second deals"with a subject of which Pope had 
no knowledge. The theme affords him merely an opportunity to 
catalogue feminine foibles ; the spirit of the whole is indicated in 
the opening couplets : — 

" Nothing so true as what you once let fall ; 
Most women have no character at all ; 
Matter too soft a lasting mark to bear, 
And best distinguished by black, brown, or fair." 

The third and fourth epistles treat of false taste in the use of 
wealth, and covertly attack the political corruption complacently 
endured, if not openly promoted, by Walpole. 'J'he Essays abound 
in brilliant descriptions, caustic satire on the follies and vices of the 
day, and keen attacks on men of greater fame than honor. They 
are written in Pope's best vein, and, taken all in all, constitute a 
part of his work second only to the Iniitations from Horace. 

These six Imitations were undertaken at the suggestion of Boling- 
broke, who stood sponsor for the Essay on Man. In them we have 
Pope at his best. Horace is followed only when that suits Pope's 
convenience. This, of course, was necessary, for, as Johnson ob- 
served, "there is an irreconcilable dissimilitude between Roman 
images and English manners." The poems are in a certain sense 
autobiographical, particularly the Prologue or Epistle to Dr. Arbiith- 

1 The final arrangement of the essays differs from the chronological 
order. The several titles and the order last adopted are given with the 
date of puhlication. (1) Of Knoioledge and Character of Men (ITd'S) : 
(2) Of the Character of Women (1735) ; (3) Of the Use of Blches (173'J) : 
(4) Of the Use of Riches (1731). These Avere published as epistles, and 
others not belonging to the series were later added, though written much 
earlier. 



76 POPE. 

not, in which may be found the famous satire on Addison and the 
exquisite lines referring to the poet's mother. The force of many 
of tiie portraits is lost now in the general ignorance of the persons 
satirized; but "the point and venom are there, and will not be 
lost so long as fuller knowledge is accessible." 

Some mention must be made of Pope's correspondence, an arti- 
ficial, rhetorical lot of letters, by no means worth the lying and 
deceit which attended their publication. " The elaborate scheme 
he planned and carried out, so as to appear in the light of being 
forced for his own protection to publish this correspondence, reads 
like the plot of a cheap and particularly villanous melodrama." 
The whole miserable story may be found in Dilke's Papers of a 
Critic, or in Volume I. of Elwin's edition of Pope. In the history 
of literature, there is no incident that, for mendacity, treachery, 
and meanness, can parallel the revolting duplicity of Pope's con- 
duct. The deformities of his body seem to have warped his soul. 
Of his conduct throughout life the same thing must be said. 
Petty intrigues were his delight; deceit was preferred when the 
truth would have served him better. No man, he tells us, can be 
known save by discovery of his ruling passion. And for him an 
inordinate vanity and an insatiate love of praise made it, — 

" Enough if all around him but admire." 

Pope's contemporaries ranked him among the peers of song. In 
later days some critics have denied him the name of poet, while 
others have sanctioned the judgment of the Augustans. Byron, 
Scott, and Ruskin give him the warmest praise ; and all agree that 
on his own ground he stands alone. The point to determine is 
simply what Pope's peculiar province is. His defects are of such 
nature that, no matter how great his merits may be, his entrance 
into the first rank — that of Chaucer, Shakespeare, and Spenser — 
is forbidden. His genius was not creative ; his imagination has 
rhetorical power, but no passion ; he cannot sing; his best thoughts 
but engage the mind, and never reach the heart. He has no 
intense feeling, no height nor depth ; he cannot see the glory of 
nature nor hear her melodies, — "a prinu'ose was no more to him 



ESSAY ON CRITICISM. 77 

than it was to Peter Bell." There are, however, great merits in 
his verse, and these entitle him to a high place in the second order 
of poets. A lively fancy, rhetorical skill, an almost unparalleled 
power in satire, and a consummate mastery of words are not gifts 
to be lightly esteemed. His genius was hampered by the servile 
spirit of his time, and he was not a man who could rise superior 
to its influence. 

ESSAY ON CRITICISM. 

The aim of the Essay is to present the accepted principles of 
poetic and critical composition. Its value does not consist at all 
in the originality of the precepts, but wholly in the skill with 
which they are presented. Pope's work had been preceded by 
the A7\s Poetica of Horace, the Poetica of Vida, UArt Poetique of 
Boileau. In English, also, there had been an Essay on Satire and 
Essay on Poetry, by the Earl of Mulgrave ; an Essay on Translated 
Verse, by Roscommon (who also translated Horace's Ars Poetica) ; 
and an Essay upon Unnatural Flights in Poetry, by Lord Lansdowne. 
Pope's Essay embodies all that had gone before. It gives us the 
result of an intelligent study of Greek and Latin critical writing, 
and summarizes the works of the French and English critics of 
the seventeenth century. " It may be described as a literary patch- 
work ; " or, better, as a compendium of criticism. 

The Essay was published in 1711, when Pope was in his twenty- 
fourth year. He assigns the poem to 1707, but it must be remem- 
bered that Pope's excessive vanity led him always to pretend to a 
precocity greater than he possessed. This foible inclines us to 
accept the year 1709 as the date of composition ; and in defence 
it may be urged that in every edition, up to 1743, this date (1700) 
is given. Pope's "ruling passion " has occasioned his many editors 
no small difficulty in assigning dates to his compositions. 

Whatever the date, the Essay is a marvel, when the youth of the 
writer is considered. Horace, Vida, and Boileau were old men 
when they advanced their precepts of criticism. The word Essay 
in the title accords well with the author's years and suggests that 
the poem is merely a contribution to the subject and not a methodi- 



78 POPE. 

cal treatise. There is, however, sufficient method to give coher- 
ence to the many details. Three parts are clearly indicated: the 
first (11. 1-201) treats of the art of criticism ; the second (11. 202- 
560) analyzes the ten causes of wrong judgment in criticism; the 
third (11. 560 ad Jin.) discusses the qualities Jhatshoaild distinguish 
the true critic. There is no difficulty^ in finding fault with the 
composition. It has many repetttitJTrs; some inconsistencies, and 
a few irrelevant Imes. The metre is sometimes faulty, there is a 
monotony of rhyme, and an unpleasant recurrence of a few over- 
worked words. A more serious fault is the exaltation of Walsh, 
Sheffield, and Roscommon above Chaucer, Spenser, Shakespeare, 
and Milton. Nowhere, however, can be found a better guide for 
the critic. The Essaj/ abounds in terse felicitous expressions fur- 
nished by Pope in their final form. Scarcely a page but contains 
aphorisms marked by a shrewdness and nicety that have made 
them the literary stock of many to whom the Essay is unknown. 
St. Beuve, the greatest of French critics, pronounced it quite as 
good as the work of Horace or Boileau. Certain it is that no com- 
position has ever exercised so potent an influence upon contempo- 
rary writers ; nor could there be a surer evidence of its worth than 
the acceptance of its style and precepts by all subsequent writers 
until the revolt against formality successfully conducted by Words- 
worth and Coleridge. 

4. Sense : supply the word ' critical ' and the meaning will be 
clear. 

5. in that ... in this : Pope early drags in his favorite antithesis. 
The mannerism is one he was not slow to detect and condemn in 
others. Cf. Epistle to Dr. Arbuthnot, 11. 323-325. 

6. Censure : is used with a meaning now obsolete. Cf. 1. 16, 
where the word occurs with the force it has to-day. 

9 ff. The simile of the watches is probably borrowed from the epi- 
logue of Suckling's Aglama. The drama is not easily accessible and 
the lines are therefore quoted : — 

" But as when an authentic watch is shown, 
Each man winds up and rectifies his own, 
So in our very judgments." 



ESSAY ON CRITICISM. 79 

11 it. Pope here follows Longinus, who places the great critic almost 
on a level with a great original genius. There have been fewer great 
poets than great critics, and modern judgment discriminates between 
talent, the critic's power, and genius, the poet's endowment. 

15. Such . . . who : modern idiom requires ' as ' for the correlative 
of 'such.' In Pope's time 'who,' -which,' or 'that,' might be used. 
Cf. 11. 385 and 511. In themselves is an ambiguity. Pope has a 
note on this passage, quoting from Pliny: " De pictore, sculptore, 
fictore, nisi artifex, judicare non potest," "Concerning a painter, a 
sculptor, a maker of statues, no one except an artist is competent to 
judge." Johnson did not think this good reasoning. "You may abuse 
a tragedy, though you cannot write one. You may scold a carpenter 
who has made you a bad table, though you cannot make a table. It 
is not your trade to make tables." 

17. Wit : this word was in common use among the writers of 
Pope's day. It occurs at least forty-nine times in this Essay and has 
no less than seven distinct though closely related meanings. Wit is 
derived from the Anglo-Saxon icitan, ' to know.' The primary mean- 
ing is (1) the 'intellect,' and (2) 'knowledge.' The first was later 
narrowed to (3) ' judgment ' and (4) ' fancy ' or what to-day we name 
' imagination.' Prom ' imagination ' came (5) products of imagination, 
i.e. certain analogies that the mind perceives in nature, and (6) far- 
fetched resemblances between things apparently dissimilar. Lastly, 
it denotes (7) those who detect such analogies. In the present line 
' wit ' means knowledge. Hereafter, when the word is used, the stu- 
dent may refer to this note and ascertain the meaning required by the 
context. 

20. Pope quotes from Cicero, De Oratore, Bk. III. Chap. 50. . The 
passage translated reads : " All men, by a certain tacit sense, without 
any artistic skill or power of reason, can determine what is right and 
wrong in the arts and in reasoning." 

23-25. Triplets occur eight times in this Essay. After the Iliad, 
Pope ceased to use them to any extent. None are found in the Essay 
on 3Ian. The triplet, like the Alexandrine, is properly used to mark 
a climax, or, rarely, to break the monotony of the couplet. It was 
introduced by the Elizabethan poets and first used to excess by 
Dryden, 

26. Maze of schools : confusion of doctrines. 

30. Modern idiom of course does not permit this construction. 



80 POPE. 

Pope often compels his pronouns to bear unaccustomed burdens. Cf. 
11. 15, 35, and 169. One unhappy result of the polishing to which he 
submitted all his compositions may be noticed here. In the first 
edition, this couplet read : — 

*' Those hate as rivals all that write : and others 
But envy wits as eunuchs envy lovers." 

The corrected copy gives us the rhymes ' write ' and ' spite ' twice in six 
lines. In the prologue to Part II. of Dryden's Conquest of Granada 
is the following couplet : — 

" They who write ill, and they who ne'er durst wTite 
Turn critics out of mere revenge and spite." 

34. Maevius : is usually coupled with Bavius. They were wretched 
poets, who lived at the time of Virgil and Horace. They would 
never have been known had not Virgil immortalized them in the third 
Eclogue. Their names, too, furnished titles for two poems, the Baviad 
and the Mceviad, in which William Gifford (1756-1826), editor of the 
Quarterly Eeviein, attacked the sentimental poetasters who constituted 
the Della-Cruscan school. The verses of these poets, though character- 
ized by fulsome affectation and the vilest taste, were exceedingly 
popular for a time. 

38. The order of words in this verse illustrates the grammatical 
inaccuracies so numerous in this poem. 

39. The mule is a hybrid between the horse and ass, and is barren. 
40-43. The construction here is not elliptical nor is it ungrammati- 

cal. Take " those half-learned witlings " as object and turn the whole 
into prose order. The passage becomes clear, though inelegant. 

44. Tell : means to count. So in Milton's L"" Allegro, 11. 67-68. 
See also Exodus, v. 8. Cf. modern phrase 'all told.' The form 'em 
has no relation with our contraction from 'them,' but is a corruption 
of hem, an old dative plural of he. 

45. The faulty construction obscures the meaning. Pope meant 
to say that to talk as much as one vain wit does, would tire a hundred 
ordinary tongues. 

48-49. These lines are adapted from Horace, Ars Poetica, 11. 38 ff. 
•• You who write should take a subject adapted to your powers ; and 



ESSAY OX CRITICISM. 81 

you should consider at length what your shoulders can carry and what 
they cannot.'" 

50. Warburton explains the "point where sense and dulness meet " 
as that at which the critic's taste and judgment part company. The 
following paragraph, he says, 11. 51-67, gives the reason for this con- 
clusion, i.e. that "the mental faculties are so constituted that one of 
them can never excel but at the expense of the others." In general 
this is probably true, but the psychology is more popular than 
scientific. Macaulay, Johnson, Dante, and Milton might be cited as 
exceptions. 

53. Pretending : ambitious or aspiring. Note the repetition of the 
rhymes in 11. 60 and 61. 

61. The maxim of Hippocrates, "Life is short but art is long," 
has been adapted by most of our poets. 

62. Peculiar : means particular. 

64. Can you illustrate this statement ? 

68 ff. Each student must settle for himself a question that has 
vexed several generations of editors. Leslie Stephen, Life of Pope, 
says Pope would have been puzzled to tell precisely what he meant 
by his antithesis between nature and art. Mr. Courthope defends the 
poet with great ability. The advice to critics may be simplified as 
follows : Since nature prescribes the limits for true poetry, the critic 
should frame his judgment by her unvarying laws. These laws are 
nature methodized ; their true exemplification is found in the old 
poets, Homer and Virgil, and their purest statement in the old critic, 
Aristotle, whose nearness to nature enabled them to copy her more 
closely, and we are nearest nature when we copy them most closely 
(11. 68-140). 

73. This line, by its loose generality, contradicts the accepted 
notion that the end of art is to produce pleasure by means of the 
imagination. The logical test, therefore, would be the degree of 
success attained. ,^ 

75. Line seventy -nine makes clear the possible ambiguity of this 
line. 

80-81. Wit : has two meanings in these lines. The next couplet 
expands and illustrates the meaning of this distich. 

86. The -winged courser: i.e. Pegasus. Generous: has here 
its root (gener) force of thoroughbred, hence mettlesome. Cf. George 
Eliot, Hoio Lisa loved the King, stanza II. 
o 



82 POPE. 

88. The canons of criticism were not devised by critics, but were 
deduced from the works of the great masters, whose inspiration was 
nature and whose work may therefore be identified with nature. 
The student would do well to read Johnson's remarks on this subject 
in the Eambler, No. 158, Sept. 21, 1758. 

90. But: means only, and is incorrectly placed. That nature is 
restrained only by such laws as she herself ordained is not intelligible. 
Longinus tells us, in the Treatise on the Sublime, that the restraints 
of art are what curb nature. 

96. The immortal prize : at the Greater or City Dionysia, the 
chief spring festival of the Athenians, there were dramatic contests at 
which prizes were awarded to the writers of successful comedies and 
tragedies. 

98. The construction answers to the Latin ablative absolute. The 
student should notice the unidiomatic English in the expression " given 
from examples." 

105. The subject of wooed and antecedent of -who must be sup- 
plied. Cf. note to 1. 80. 

106. The thought of these lines seems to have been suggested by 
Dryden's dedication of his Translation of Ovid. See also Johnson's 
opinion in the Eambler, No. 3, March 27, 1750. 

107. Cf. 1. 347. 

108. A licensed apothecary in England is allowed to practise medi- 
cine as well as to sell drugs. The abbreviation is sanctioned by old 
dramatists. One of Hey ward's Four P's is a ' poticary.' 

109. Doctor's bills : prescriptions. 

112. This half sneer at the editors of ancient texts finds unre- 
strained expression in the Dunciad, Bk. IV. 1. 199 ff. 

117. Cf. Dunciad, Bk. IV. 11. 251, 252. 

120. Fable : i.e. the plot. 

124-125. These lines are adapted from Horace, Ars Poetica, 11. 
268, 269. "Study Greek examples by night and day.'' Byron, 
Hints from Horace, has : — 

" Ye who seek finished models, never cease 
By day and night to read the works of Greece." 

129. Mantuan Muse : Virgil. Publius Virgilius Mare is the poet's 
full name. He was born near Mantua, in Cisalpine Gaul, b.c. 70. 



ESSAY ON CRITICISM. 83 

130. Pope, in a note, gives the anecdote on which he based these 
lines : "It is a tradition preserved by Servius, that Virgil began with 
writing a poem of the Alban and Roman affairs ; which he found above 
bis years, and descended first to imitate Theocritus on rural subjects, 
and afterward to copy Homer in heroic poetry." 

138. Stagirite : Aristotle, who was born b.c. 384, at Stagira, a sea- 
port town of Chalcidice. Among his extant works are the Poetics and 
Rhetoric. The word ' Stagirite ' (accented as here) occurs in the other 
lines in the Essay. It should, however, be Stagirite. Cf. 1. 271, where 
Pope condemns Dennis for the very thing which here is reckoned in 
Virgil's praise. 

143. " A Painter may make a better face than ever was ; But he 
must doe it by a kinde of Felicity (As a Musician that maketh an 
excellent Ayre in Musicke) And not by Rule." (Bacon's essay Of 
Beauty.) With this passage, cf. Boileau, Art of Poetry, 1. 78 ff. 

152. Brave disorder: the phrase occurs in the translation of 
Boileau's Art of Poetry hy Soame, Canto II., discussion of the ode, 
11. 14-15. Sir William Soame made a translation of L^Ai't Poetique, and 
at Dryden's suggestion the allusions were adapted to English authors. 

159. In Dryden's Arungzehe., Act IV., occurs a line which may 
have suggested this one : — 

" Mean soul, and dar'st not gloriously offend." 

162. Pope is again indebted to Dryden. The expression may be 
found in the Discourse on Epic Poetry., which formed the preface of 
his translation of the uEneid. Apollo, answering a charge of anachro- 
nism against "his son Virgil," says that "being a monarch, he had a 
dispensing power and pardoned him." The right to exempt indi- 
viduals from the penal laws was freely exercised by Henry VII. and 
continued unchallenged until the time of Charles II. The attempt of 
James II. to enforce this prerogative precipitated the revolution (1688) 
by which the Stuarts lost the throne of England. The Bill of Rights 
(1699) declared the dispensing power to be illegal. A full and exceed- 
ingly interesting account may be found in Macaulay's History of Eng- 
land. 

169. Cf. note on 1. 30. 

170. Faults : the rhyme is not false, for the I was not sounded at 
Pope's time. The same rhymes occur at least twice in Soame's trans- 
lation of Horace, Cantos III. and IV. 



84 POPE. 

172-174. These lines are taken directly from Horace, 1. 360 ff. 
Cf. Byron, Hints from Horace, 11. 571-576 ; also Soame and Dryden's 
Trans, of VArt Poetique, Canto I. 11. 171-178. 

180. Homer nods : Horace, 1. 359, has : — 

" Vexed on the other hand, if now and then 

Short fits of slumber creep on Homer's pen." 

— Trans, by Howes. 
Roscommon is less respectful : — 

" Whose railing heroes, and whose wounded gods, 
Make some suspect he snores as well as nods." 

— Essay on Translated Verse^ 11. 138-140. 

Cf. Byron, Hints from Horace^ 11. 569-570. 

182. Mr. Collins notes that this line is transposed literally from 
Roscommon's epilogue to Alexander the Great. 

183-184. Bishop Warburton says that reference is here made to 
"the four great causes of ravage amongst ancient writings." These 
were : {a) the destruction of the Alexandrine and Palatine libraries 
by fire ; (&) the fiercer rage of critics like Zoilus, Msevius, and their 
followers against wit ; (c) the irruption of the barbarians into the em- 
pire in the fifth century ; {d) the long reign of monkish ignorance 
and superstition. 

189. Cf. Dryden, Beligio Laid., 1. 80 ; also Virgil, ^neid, Bk. VI. 
1. 649. 

194. The word must is equivalent to 'can.' No student can ap- 
preciate the force of this word without looking up its history. See 
Skeat's Etymological Dictionary, Sweet's Short Historical English 
Grammar., sec. 721, and Abbott's Shakespearian Grammar., sec. 314 ; 
also Century Dictionary. 

204. Cf. Essay on Man, Epistle U, 11. 282-294. 

206. Recruits: i.e. supplies. 

207-208. The physiology in this passage is of course the sheerest 
nonsense. The order is faulty. Certainly souls do not stand in need 
of blood and spirits. 

213-214. With these lines, cf. Boileau, UArt Poetique, 11. 49-58. 
In Soame and Dryden's Trans., 11. 47-56. 

215. A little learning: cf. Bacon's essay Of Atheism, for the 
probable source of this passage. 



ESSAY ON CRITICISM. 85 

216. Pierian spring : Pierides was a name for the nine muses. The 
name was derived probably from Pieria, a place in Thessaly where the 
muses were worshipped. There is a legend that the daughter of Pierus 
challenged the muses to a contest in singing. When the muses began, 
Mt. Helicon gradually rose until it was stopped by a kick from Pegasus, 
and from the place he kicked, the spring Hippocrene bubbled forth. 

225 ff. "This famous simile," Johnson said, "is perhaps the best 
that English poetry can show." His comments should be read by 
every student. See Lives of the Poets, "Pope." An eminent critic 
of our own day calls it a " poor simile ' ' and says it is pretty well for- 
gotten. See Leslie Stephen's Life of Pope, p. 27. In either case the 
figure was not original with Pope. He found the germ of it in An 
Hymn of the Forest Fair (Floivers of Zion) by Drummond of Haw- 
thornden. This was first pointed out by Warton. 

234. The solecism is occasioned by the ellipsis. ' Such ' and 
'same,' used as correlatives, are avoided in poetic diction. Pope's 
remedy would have been, not to expand the sentence, but to recast it. 

239. In such lays : there is here a Latin force of the preposition 
in, ' in the case of.' Or there may be the double construction, called 
by rhetoricians anacoluthon. "Such lays we cannot blame," or "In 
such lays we cannot blame anything." Pope has a combination of 
the two ideas. It was his mania for polishing and revising that ex- 
posed the poet to confusions such as this. Cf., with this passage, 
Boileau's L''Art Poetique, Canto I. 11. 72-73, Soame and Dryden's 
Trans., 11. 71-72. 

243 ff. Cf. Horace, Ars Poetica, 11. 32-35, Howes' Trans., 11.50-57. 

247. Dome : either the Pantheon or St. Peter's at Rome. 

251. Appear : should the form be plural ? 

258-262. Cf. Horace, Ars Poetica, 11. 347-353, and Byron, Hints 
from Horace, 11. 557-570. 

261. Verbal : is here equivalent to verbose, a sense of the word 
now obsolete. 

263-266. Johnson {Bamhler, No. 158) says, "Criticism has not 
yet attained the certainty and stability of science." Students will 
recall the attitude of Matthew Arnold toward criticism. In Pope's 
time and long after, critical writing was devoted largely to an expres- 
sion of individual preferences. 

267. La Mancha's knight : Don Quixote. The incident here 
described is not taken from Cervantes, but from a continuation of his 



86 POPE. 

romance by an author who assumed the name of Avellaneda and pos- 
sibly may have been Lope de Vega. This second part was translated 
and remodelled by Le Sage (1668-1747), author of Gil Bias. It may 
interest the student to know that Cervantes and Shakespeare died on 
the same day (April 23, 1616). 

270. John Dennis (1657-1734) : is one of several writers known to 
posterity mainly by reason of Pope's attacks on them, Dennis was 
possessed of a narrow, pedantic scholarship and an abusive critical 
power. He wrote several plays (see 1. -585), but his best work is in his 
Original Letters., Familiar., Moral., and Critical. It was his attack on 
Addison's Gato that indirectly caused the breach between Pope and 
Addison. (See Macaulay's Essay on Addison, ed. by S. Thurber, pp. 
292-294.) The quarrel between Dennis and Pope began when Dennis 
criticised the Bape of the Lock, and continued with great bitterness 
until after his death. He was blind and poverty-stricken late in life, 
and in 1733 Vanbrugh's Provoked Husband, with a prologue by Pope, 
was acted for his benefit. 

276. Unities: the dramatic unities were deduced from Aristotle's 
Poetics and Greek dramas. They were three in number, — time, 
place, and action. The first required that the events of a drama should 
be such as would occur in a single day ; the second forbade shifting the 
scene from place to place ; the third eliminated everything that did not 
bear directly on the catastrophe. The unities were formulated by 
Corneille in three essays, published in 1659. 

287. Form short ideas : their ideas fall short of the truth, and as 
critics of art they become offensive as persons of eccentric behavior in 
general society. 

289-292. The school of poets whose characteristics are given in 
these lines was called metaphysical or fantastic, and included Donne, 
Crashaw, Cowley, Waller, and Cleveland. They lived in Milton's 
time. Dr. Johnson, in his Life of Goivley, gave a clear analysis of 
their style. 

297-298. The thought of this couplet is not quite clear. The 
argument seems to be that the wit of the fantastic school was false, 
because we do not see in nature the quaint analogies fancied by 
Crashaw or Cowley. The image reflected by the poet should be one 
that the common man could see as well ; the poet's advantage consists 
in his superior power of expressing what he sees. Read Lowell's 
Essay on Pope. Por the thought here. Pope was indebted to both 



ESSAY ON CRITICISM. 87 

Dry den and Boilean. Lines 311-319 form a good commentary on this 
couplet. Cf. Buckingbam, Essay on Poetry, 270, 271 : — 

" Humor is all ; wit should be only brought 
To turn agreeably some proper thought." 

Also Spectator^ No. 253, a review of the Essay. Addison quotes from 
Boileau the part referred to above. 
299. Supply the ellipsis carefully. 

305. The allusion in this paragraph is probably to the euphuists, 
the gallants of England in the days of Elizabeth. The interested 
student may find what this style was by reading a few sentences from 
John Lilly's Euphues and his England, or from Lodge's Bosalynde. 

306. Pope takes no pains to hide his contempt for women. See 
Moral Essays, Epistle 11. 

318. Still : cf . 1. 32. The meaning is Elizabethan. The word fills 
out the line, and has no other use. 

319. Decent : cf. Goldsmith, The Deserted Village, 1. 12 and note. 
322. Sort: means agree with. The verb is, of course, usually 

transitive. 

324. This charge has been brought against Livy and Sallust ; and 
might be urged against Spenser, for the diction of his Shepherd'' s 
Calendar. In the preface to these eclogues he tells us that he pur- 
posely employed archaic forms, and gives good reason for his choice. 
Pretence : is here used in a good sense, denoting a claim to merit or 
dignity. Cf. Cowper, Truth, 1. 93. 

328. Fungoso : a character in Ben Jonson's Every Man out of his 
Humor (1599). The dramatis personce describes him as "a student, 
one that has revelled in his time, and follows the fashion afar off, as a 
spy." He is called "unlucky," because of his experiences in attempt- 
ing to imitate in dress and manner Fastidious Brisk, a character aptly 
described by his name. 

329. Sparks: "A spark is a lively, showy, splendid, gay man. 
The term is commonly applied in contempt." Johnson's Dictionary. 

332. Doublet : this was an outer garment worn by men. Some- 
times it had skirts, but more often did not. In the time of Charles I. 
it became an under garment, lost its sleeves, and at last developed into 
the modern waistcoat. 

337. Numbers : in the sense of verse is imitated from Latin. Cf. 
Epistle to Dr. Arbuthnot, 1. 128. 



88 POPE. 

345. The student will not fail to notice how well in this and the 
following lines Pope illustrates the fault he condemns. To avoid the 
unpleasant effect from juxtaposition of open vowels, poets often niade 
use of elisions (cf. 11. 200, 327). In our day, the final vowel of the 
first word is slurred rather than altogether elided. For this reason, 
the many elisions that occurred in Pope's text have not been pre- 
served. 

346. The exact meaning of expletives is clear when one considers 
why oaths are so called. 

347. In 1667, Dryden, in his Essay on Dramatic Poesy, wrote of 
some obscure author: "He is a very leveller in poetry; he creeps 
along with ten little words in every line . . . and helps out his num- 
bers with all the pretty expletives he can find." 

350. Pope took his examples of trite rhymes from Hopkin's Trans- 
lation of OvkVs 3Ietamorj)hoses, Bk. XI : — 

"No tame nor savage beast dwells there ; no breeze 
Shakes the still boughs, or whispers through the trees : 
Here easy streams with pleasing murmurs creep, 
At once inviting and assisting sleep." 

But see Eloisa to Abelard, 11. 150, 160; Winter, 11. 61, 62, 70, 80; 
Essay on Jinn, I. 11. 271, 272. 

356. Alexandrine: is illustrated in the next line. The name is 
taken from the Boman d"" Alexandre, a poem of the twelfth century, 
written in this metre. The poem was begun by Lambert le Court 
and finished by Alexandre de Bernay, whence some derive the name 
of the verse. It was used freely by Cowley and Dryden, and is found 
frequently in Pope's early poems. 

361. Sir John Denham (1615-1668) and Edmund Waller (1605- 
1687): were poets of mediocre talents, greatly overestimated by their 
contemporaries and immediate followers. Denham' s fame rests on 
Cooper's Hill ; Waller is best known by his lyrics. The one begin- 
ning Go, Lovely Bose, the lines On a Girdle, and the verses on old 
age are not likely to be forgotten. These poets may be regarded as 
the forerunners of the school that found its apotheosis in Pope. 

365. Cf. Roscommon's Essay on Translated Verse, 1. 342. The 
thought and imagery of the following passage are taken from Vida's 
Art of Poetry, Bk. III. Every student should read Johnson's com- 



ESSAY ON CBiriCISM. 89 

ment on this passage, Life of Pope. Valuable also are his remarks in 
the Bamhler, No. 92, Feb. 2, 1751. 

370. Ajax: twice hurls "crags." See Iliad, VII. 268 ff. ; Bry- 
ant's Trans., 316 ff. ; and XII. 1. 380 ff. ; Bryant's Trans., 1. 451 ff. 

372. Camilla : the virgin queen of the Volscians ; assisted Turnus 
in his war against ^neas. See ^Eneid, VII. 1. 808 ff. Pope's lines 
are variations of Dryden's translation. See Bk. VII. 1. 1094 ff. 

.374. Timotheus : The allusion is to Dryden's Alexander's Feast. 
Pope in this passage presents a good, spirited summary of his master's 
greatest lyric. 

376. The son of Libyan Jove : this refers to the legend that 
Alexander the Great was a son of Zeus Ammon, a Libyan god. 

383. John Dryden (1631-1700) was Pope's poetical father. "I 
learned versification wholly from Dryden's works, who had improved 
it much beyond any of oar former poets." (Spence's Anecdotes, 
p. 46.) Pope, though but twelve years old when Dryden died, saw 
him once. See Johnson's Life of Pope. 

384. Such . . . who : cf. note to 1. 15. 

391. Admire: exactly the Latin «cZ??in'an, to feel astonished. Cf. 
Horace, Epistle I. VI. 1-2. Approve : is used in the sense of test. 
Cf. King Henry IV., Part I. Act IV. sc. i. 1. 9. 

394. Foreign -writers : Pope originally wrote '•'■ French writers." 
The reference is to the dispute about the relative importance of an- 
cient and modern writers, which originated in France late in the seven- 
teenth century and soon spread to England. It occasioned the famous 
Phalaris controversy and Swift's satire, Battle of the Books. See 
Macliulay's Essay on Sir William Temple, and De Quincey's Essay 
on Bentley. 

397. To one small sect : this line gave offence to the Roman 
Catholics, against whom the sarcasm is directed. When the same 
sect objected to the next line, Pope said that the ' they ' referred to 
'some,' 1. 394. See Stephen's Life of Pope, p. 174. 

403. Enlights : see Century Dictionary. 

423. Cf. note to 1. 170. 

428 : Schismatics : was accented on the antepenult in Pope's 
time. AVhat peculiarity does its present accent show ? 

435. 'Twixt sense and nonsense: describes this couplet no 
less than it does the weak heads. Towns unfortified frequently 
change sides, but they do not hover between sense and nonsense. 



90 POPE. 

441. The reference here is to the Book of Sentences (1159), a com- 
pilation of religious doctrines gathered from the early church fathers. 
It was arranged by Peter Lombard, Bishop of Paris, who was known 
as the Master of Sentences. The book became the manual of the 
schools. 

444. Scotists and Thomists : the student can learn what a Scotist 
was by looking up the etymology of the word " dunce." " Thomists " 
were followers of Thomas Aquinas (1227-1274), "the Angelic Doc- 
tor." He was of the Dominican order, and was a famous lecturer 
in Paris and in Italian universities. He wrote a learned commentary 
on Peter Lombard's Book of Sentences. An account of the war 
between the Scotists and Thomists may be found in Milman's History 
of Latin Christianity^ Vol. IX. Chap. III., and in Hallam's Introduc- 
tion to the Literature of Europe, Chap. I. 

445. Pope, in a note, explains that " Duck Lane was a place where 
old and second hand books were sold formerly, near Smithlield." 

448 ff. Here is a crux. Warburton says, "The writer, when he 
finds his readers disposed to take ready wit on the standard of current 
folly, never troubles himself to think of better payment." Thomas 
Arnold explains thus, "He who paints current follies gains laughter 
and applause ; but after a few years the joke seems frigid, and the 
wit forced." 

459. Of the parsons who rose against Dryden, Jeremy Collier and 
Luke Milbourne may be mentioned ; the critics were Thomas Shad- 
well and Elkanah Settle ; the beaux were Guy Villiers, Duke of Buck- 
ingham, and John Wilmot, Earl of Rochester. Dryden's relations 
with these men can be understood best by reference to Saintsbnry's 
Life of Dryden and Johnson's Life of Dryden. 

463. Sir Richard Blackmore wrote The Creation, a didactic poem 
in seven books, highly praised by Addison and Johnson ; an epic poem 
on King Alfred; and a sacred poem. The Eedeemer. He was physi- 
cian to William III. and to Queen Anne. His biography may be 
found in Johnson's Lives of the Poets. 

465. Zoilus : is called the "scourge of Homer," because of the 
severity with which he attacked the author of the Iliad and Odyssey. 
Plato also incurred his censure. He was probably a contemporary of 
Demosthenes (b.c. 382-322). 

480. Cf. Milton, Lycidas, 1. 70 ff. 

483. Both Dryden and Pope modernized part of Chaucer's Tales. 



ESSAY ON CRITICISM. 91 

The fact is, however, that Chaucer is to-day more popular than either 
of his translators. Many authors have sought to secure their work for 
posterity by the use of Latin. Bacon for this reason translated his 
work into Latin. Warton quotes from Waller's Of English Verse : — 

" Poets that lasting marble seek 
Must carve in Latin or in Greek ; 
"We write in sand : our language grows, 
And like the tide our work o'erflows." 

484 ff. Pope amused himself with painting, as Milton did with 
music. Cf. Epistle to Jervas. See also the concluding lines of 
Dry den's Epistle to Sir Godfrey Kneller. 

506-507. This couplet is not at all clear. That the vicious should 
fear wit is natural ; the virtuous shun it, perhaps, because the pos- 
sessors so often abuse and pervert it. Warburton, whose commen- 
tary was published in 1744, thus explains by knaves undone : 
"The poet would insinuate a common but shameful truth, that men 
in power, if they got power by illiberal acts, generally left wit and 
science to starve." 

509. Commence its foe : begin to be its foe — the intransitive use. 

511. Such . . . who : cf. note to 1. 15. 

514. The repetition of crown is an instance of carelessness rarely 
found in Pope. 

519. Ill author : author is not one of the few words with which 
ill is used attributively. The phrase is not idiomatic. We can say 
'ill health,' 'ill nature,' 'ill wind,' etc. With other words ill is 
used predicatively — then the meaning changes, i.e. 'the author is ill.' 

521. Sacred: with the meaning accursed^ imitates the Latin use. 

528. Provoke : also with Latin force, meaning to call forth. Cf. 
Gray's Elegy, 1. 43. 

534. In lloscommon's Essay on Translated Verse (1. 319) are 
words to the same effect. 

" Immodest words admit of no defense, 
Eor want of decency is want of sense." 

Roscommon acted on this principle ; Pope's practice was far below 
his preaching. The fat age of pleasure : the reign of Charles II., 
the easy monarch referred to in 1. 536. 



92 POPE. 

538. The jilts were the mistresses of Charles II. See Green's 
Short History of England^ p. 617, and Macaulay's Essay on 3Iilton, 
edited by S. Thurber, p. 45. The statesmen who wrote farces were 
George Villiers, author of the Behearsal^ and Sir George Etherege, 
author of the 3Ian of Mode and She Would if She Could. 

539. Not all the wits had pensions. Butler, author of Hudibras, 
died in poverty ; Otway died while hiding from his creditors ; and 
Wycherley was left seven years in Fleet prison for debt. Dryden, 
laureate for Charles II., was long in indigence, and bitterly com- 
I)lained, "'Tis enough for one age to have neglected Mr. Cowley and 
starved Mr. Butler." 

541. The reference is to the fashion among ladies of wearing 
masks at a play. Cibber attributes the custom to the gross immo- 
rality and indecency in the dramas of the day. 

544. Foreign reign : i.e. that of William III. Originally the fol- 
lowing couplet appeared here : — 

" There first the Belgian morals were extolled, 
We their religion had, and they our gold." 

When these lines were taken out. Pope said that they contained 
"a national reflection which in his stricter judgment he could not 
but disapprove on any people whatever." 

545. Socinus (1539-1604) : he opposed evangelical theology and 
denied the divinity of Christ, the doctrines of atonement, of original 
sin, of eternal punishment, of the personality of the Holy Spirit, and 
of the existence of Satan. 

546. The unbelieving priests were the Latitudinarian divines at 
the time of William III. They advocated the union of the dissenters 
with the established church on the basis of such doctrines as were 
accepted by both parties. Pope is supposed to have had Bishop 
Burnet in mind. 

550. Cf. 3Ioral Essays, IV. 149, 150, and Pope's note on that 
passage. 

551. Cf. 1. 891, and Milton, Paradise Lost. I. 690, II. 277, 278. 
See also Century Dictionary, under 'admire.' 

553. Licensed blasphemies : Pope probably refers to Toland, 
Tindal, and Collins, defenders of deism, who were prominent at the 
end of the seventeenth and early eighteenth century. Cf. Dunciad, 
II. 399. 



ESSAY ON CRITICISM. 93 

557. Mistake . . . into vice: " Misrepresent an author in order 
to pervert his meaning into something vicious.'" 

571. Critic : i.e. critique, criticism. 

585. Appius: was Dennis, so named because of his play Appms 
and Virginia. Cf. note on 1, 270. Pope calls him "a furious old 
critic." The 'stare' was one of his characteristics. The word tre- 
mendous, too, has its point, for it was a great favorite with Dennis. 
In the farce Three Hours after Marriage., written by Gay and Pope. 
Dennis is introduced, and named Sir Tremendous. 

588. Tax: i.e. censure. Cf. Celia's words to Touchstone, As You 
Like It, Act I. sc. ii. 1. 82. 

591. At one time noblemen received from the English universi- 
ties the degree of M.A. without examination. 

592. With this rhyme, cf. 301-302. 

593. See Johnson's remarks on the practice of dedications, in the 
Life of Dryden. Pope abandoned this servile custom, and instead 
secured a list of subscribers for his Homer — a far better financial 
venture and one that preserved his independence. 

603. Jades : old nags. See Skeat's Etymological Dictionary. 

606-609. The reference is probably to Wycherley, a writer of 
comedies, who, when an old man, continued to scribble verses which 
were submitted to Pope for revision. See Macaulay\s Essay on the 
Comic Dramatists of the Restoration. 

617. Dryden' s Fables : were his last work. They were pub- 
lished in 1700, the year in which the poet died. They consisted of 
paraphrases of several tales from Chaucer and three from Boccaccio. 
Durfey (1653-1723) : an author of the lowest order. He wrote some 
thirty dramatic pieces and compiled six volumes of songs and satires. 
The tales to which reference is made here were Tales, Tragical and 
Comical (1704), and Tales, Moral and Comical (1706). See Addison's 
words in Durfey's behalf in the Guardian, No. 67, May 28, 1713. 

619. Garth . . . Dispensary: Sir Samuel Garth (1660-1718) 
was an eminent physician. The Dispensary is a mock heroic poem 
in six cantos dealing with a feud between tlie apothecaries and the 
college of physicians. The physicians proposed to prescribe and fur- 
nish medicine gratuitously for the poor, and to this the apothecaries 
were opposed. The poem was famous at that time and for long after- 
ward. Charges of plagiarism have been many. It was said that 
Johnson wrote the greater part of Goldsmith's Traveller, that Addi- 



94 POPE. 

son did not write Cato^ that Goetlie wrote most of Schiller's WaUen- 
stein, that Pope stole the present essay from AVycherley ; and our own 
century contributes the Bacon-Shakespeare "controversy." 

622. No place is so sacred that from such fops it is barred. War- 
ton notes that this satire is taken literally from Boileau, UArt Poetiqiie, 
IV. 11. 53-56. 

623. Before the great London fire, Paul's churchyard was head- 
quarters for the booksellers, and not a few may still be found there. 

625. Ct Dnnciad, III. 1.213 ff. 

632. Proud to know : see Abbott's Shakespearian Grammar, 
sec. 356, p. 256. Cf. 1. 642. 

636. In Pope's day, humanly and humanely were not distinguished. 

648. The Mgeonian Star : i.e. Homer, so called because Smyrna, 
one of the seven cities that claimed to be his birthplace, was the capi- 
tal of Maeonia, another name for Lydia in Asia Minor. 

652. Aristotle is said to have conquered nature by virtue of his 
having written his Phijsics ; by his Bhetoric and Poetics he presides 
over wit. With this line compare lines 98 and 99, where Pope tells 
us that the critics of old derived their rules from observation of the 
poets. 

662. The student can ascertain the force of the word phlegm by 
consulting Skeat's Etymological Dictionary. 

663-664. It seems strange that a writer of Pope's accuracy would 
allow this couplet to stand. What he means is that Horace does not 
suffer more by the wrong translations of the wits than he does by the 
misquotation of the critics. What does he say ? 

665. Dionysius : " of Halicarnassus " {Pope). He was the author 
of numerous critical waitings, some of which are still extant. Born 
between 78 and 54 b.c. ; died 7 b.c. 

667. Petronius : died a.d. Q>Q ; was author of the immoral romance 
Satirican and was in high favor at Nero's court. 

669. Grave Quintilian (42-118 a.d.) : was the author of a valu- 
able book, De Institutione Oratoria, which has come down to us. 

675. Longinus (213P-273 a.d.) : is the supposed author of what 
is probably the best treatise on criticism ever written. It has been 
used as a text-book by most of the best critics, and fully justifies the 
tribute made here by Pope. 

686. Rome : before Pope's time, was pronounced room. Cf. 
Shakespeare's use in Julius Ccesar, Act. I. sc. ii. 1. 156, and Act. III. 



ESSAY ON CRITICISM. 95 

sc. i. 1. 289 ; also in King John, Act. III. sc i. 1. 180. With this passage 
compare Hallam's Introduction to the Literature of Europe, Chst.^. I. 

693. Erasmus (l-467-15o6) : did much for the dissemination of 
culture and learning. See Green's Short History of the English People, 
p. 305 ff. He was the glory of the priesthood through his genius ; he 
was its shame, because he exposed its vice and corruption. In his 
Encomium 3Iori(E he demolished the tottering system of the monks 
(1.696). 

697. Leo's golden days: Pope Leo X. (1475-1521), son of 
Lorenzo de Medici, was destined for the church from childhood. He 
became a cardinal at the age of eleven, and served as pope from 1513- 
1521. To secure money for completing the rebuilding of St. Peter's 
begun by his predecessor Julius II., he issued indulgences, thereby 
increasing the discontent which culminated in the Reformation. His 
pontificate was unsuccessful, but he was an enthusiastic patron of 
literature and the arts. 

704. Raphael (1483-1520) : is recognized as the prince of painters. 
Vida : Marco Girolama (1490-1566) was one of the most distinguished 
writers at the time of Leo X. At the Pope's suggestion he wrote an 
epic called the Christi. His didactic poem, the Art of Poetry, fur- 
nished Pope with material freely adapted in the present essay. The 
poem was written shortly before Vida's death, and is devoted mainly 
to the consideration of the rules of epic verse. As a result of Pope's 
praise, it was translated into English by Christopher Pitt. Vida was 
made Bishop of Alba, and at Alba he spent the last years of his 
life. 

707-708. Cremona : was Vida's birthplace ; and, according to 
Pope, ranks next to Mantua, Virgil's birthplace. 

709. The reference is to the sack of Rome by the Constable Bour- 
bon in 1527. 

714. Boileau-Despreaux (1636-1711) : after a short career as an 
advocate, he began in 1666 to write, and met with immediate success. 
He was to the literature of France at that time what Dryden and Pope 
were in their eras to English. His odes are poor, but his satires and 
critical writings are excellent. UArt Poetique is a poem in four cantos, 
and summarizes the precepts of poetic literature. It was translated 
into English by Soame, who with Dryden's help changed the French 
personalities to references to English men of letters. 

723. The reference is to John Sheffield, Duke of Buckingham 



96 POPE. 

(1649-1721), in whose Essay on Poetry, 1. 724 may be found. Dryden 
and Dr. Garth also praised him highly. 

725. Roscommon: Wentworth Dillon (1633-1684); translated 
the Ars Poetica and wrote an Essay on Translated Vei^se, the only 
poem in blank verse between the death of Milton and the end of the 
seventeenth century. He was the first to recognize the splendor of 
Paradise Lost. With Dryden's help he formed a design for an Eng- 
lish Academy after the plan of the one in France. The scheme has 
found favor with many English writers — Swift, Prior, Tickell, De Foe, 
and Matthew Arnold. He protested against the current grossness of 
expression. Pope says of him : — 

' ' In all Charles' days 
Roscommon only boasts unspotted lays." 

See Johnson's Life of Boscommon. 

729. William Walsh (1663-1708) : was one of Pope's early friends. 
Dryden said, "he was the best critic of our nation;" De Quincey 
called him " a sublime old blockhead," He is preserved from oblivion 
by the advice he gave Pope, — to aim at correctness as the only means 
by which he might excel his predecessors. Pope's tribute is a grace- 
ful acknowledgment to one who has befriended and encouraged him. 
" In the statements of a panegyric one does not expect the rigor of an 
affidavit." 

739 ad fin. These lines bear a close resemblance to the conclusion 
of Boileau's L'Art Poetique. 



THOMAS GRAY. 

1716-1771. 



Thomas was the fifth of the twelve children of Philip Gray, a 
London scrivener. His mother v^as Dorothy Antrobus, who, at the 
time of her marriage, kept a milliner's shop in partnership with her 
sister Mary, in Cornhill ; and here Thomas was born, December 26, 
1716. 

Philip Gray was a wealthy man, and by his business skill added 
something to a large inheritance from his father. He was, how- 
ever, a brutal husband and negligent father, and the poet was 
indebted for his education to the loving care and untiring industry 
of his mother. Thomas was sent to Eton by an uncle, and later 
entered Peterhouse College, Cambridge. At Eton began his life- 
long friendship with Horace Walpole. Here, too, were Richard 
West and Thomas Ashton, and these four formed " a quadruple 
alliance of the warmest friendship." They were amiable, gentle 
boys, all far from strong, and united doubtless by a warm sympathy 
in one another's suffering. 

" Gray never was a boy," writes Walpole. A pale, quiet, studi- 
ous lad, careless of his health and enamoured of learning — such 
was Gray in his school days and college life. He was a student 
and moralist while other boys were cricket players and healthy 
animals. At twenty he wrote a Latin theme in seventy-three 
hexameter lines that describes the mood of man as one of hesita- 
tion between the things of heaven and the things of earth. The 
thoughts are borrowed from Horace and Pope, but the verses aie 
melodious and foreshadow the moral and elegiac style of his 
maturer years. The dull heaviness that then characterized Cam- 
bridge already weighted his nervous genius. His hours " may be 
H 97 



98 GRAY. 

best explained by negatives " ; one day is like every other, " they 
go round and round like the blind horse in a mill, only he has the 
satisfaction of fancying he makes a progress ; my eyes are open 
enough to see the same dull prospect and to know that having 
made four and twenty steps more, I shall be just where I was." 
He complains of the course of study, rebels against the strict 
requirements in mathematics, and denounces the careless neglect 
of the classics. His ill health and his dissatisfaction with the men- 
tal attitude of the university induced a passive melancholy that 
later developed into a depression of spirits from which he was 
never after wholly free. 

In 1738, Gray left Cambridge without taking his degree. At the 
invitation and expense of Walpole, Gray accompanied his friend 
in a tour of the continent. Two years and a half, the healthiest 
and probably the happiest of his life, were spent in France, Italy, 
and Switzerland. At Reggio the friends quarrelled and parted ; 
Walpole takes the fault upon himself — "he was a boy and Gray 
not yet man enough to make due allowances." This interruption 
of their intimacy was short ; their natures were too generous to 
cherish sulky animosity, and three years later they were reunited. 

In November, 1741, shortly after Gray's return to England, his 
father died. Almost his last act had been to squander his money 
in building a country house at AVan stead, so that of his ample for- 
tune no more was left than by strict economy would provide for 
Mrs. Gray and her sisters. Gray therefore gave up his intended 
study of the law, and settled in Cambridge, where, except for two 
years spent in London at the time (1759) the British Museum was 
opened to the public, he made his home for the rest of his life. 
He lived in retirement, devoting all his masterful energy to schol- 
arly attainments. Frequent visits to his mother at Stoke Pogis, 
to Mason at York, and AVharton at Durham, and a trip into Scot- 
land varied the quiet regularity of his life. In 1753 his mother 
died. On her tombstone is an inscription, written by Gray, that 
bears witness to his love for the mother to whom he owed so much, 
— " the careful tender mother of many children, one of whom alone 
had the misfortune to survive her." The poet's health, never good, 
compelled him to forego a projected trip to Switzerland in the 



GRAY. 99 

spring of 1771. He failed gradually, and an acute attack of the 
gout ended his life, July 30th of that year. He was buried, by his 
own request, beside his mother. Seven years later, on the 6th of 
August, — the anniversary of his funeral, — a monument, erected 
by ]\Iason, was opened in Westminster Abbey. It is in the Poets' 
Corner, under the monument to Milton and next to that of Sj^enser ; 
it is a medallion of Gray, and below, the inscription by Mason : — 

" No more the Grecian muse unrivalled reigns, 
To Britahi let the nations homage pay ; 
She felt a Homer's fire in Milton's strains, 
A Pindar's rapture in the lyre of Gray. 

He died July 30th, 1771. Aged 54." 

Gray was a scholar. With the exception of Milton, no English 
poet had a broader or more accurate knowledge. He was a skilful 
linguist, a master of zoology and botany, thoroughly versed in the 
history of literature, and an enthusiastic student of architecture, 
music, and painting. Mathematics he ignored ; but in nearly every 
other department of human learning he worked incessantly. When 
Greek was neglected, he studied it eagerly and left behind him a body 
of notes that attest his superiority of scholarship. His nervous fear 
of publicity and timorous dread of popularity made him a recluse. 
He rarely appeared among his fellow students at Cambridge ; he 
even dined apart, and was seldom seen except on his trips to and 
from the college library. After Gibber died (1757), Gray was 
offered the laureateship, but declined the appointment. The fol- 
lowing extract from a letter to his friend Mason shows us his 
opinion of the office and those who held it : '' The office itself has 
always humbled the professor hitherto (even in an age when kings 
were somebody), if he were a poor writer by making him more 
conspicuous, and if he were a good one by setting him at war with 
the little fry of his own profession, for there are poets little enough 
to envy even a poet-laureate." 

When we seek to discover Gray's influence over English poetry, 
we notice, first of all, that he produced very little. A few poems, 
numbering in all less than two thousand lines, include all his 
verse. In this small compass is the result of thirty years of study 



100 GRAY. 

and meditation, — the bright, " fitful gleams of inspiration " that 
irradiated the melancholy solitude of his lonely life. Mr. Arnold 
says that Gray's sterility was caused by his living in the age of 
prose and reason : *" the wells of poetry were stagnant, and there 
was no angel to strike the water." This condition had its influ- 
ence on his temperament, no doubt, and possibly restrained him 
from freer expression. From another point of view, we may say 
that Gray was indifferent to the opinion of his contemporaries ; 
that he had little respect for their learning, and never submitted 
himself to their judgment. A simple explanation of his lack of 
fertility lies near at hand. Gray was a scholar first, a poet after- 
ward. He was devoted to research and critical investigation. 
Such a nature acquires much, but produces little. The time that 
other men spent in composition, Gray used in acquisition. When 
he did write, the mark of the careful scholar is on every line. 
" All his verses bear evidence of the most painstaking labor and 
rigorous self-criticism." Beside this limitation, we must remember 
that what creative power he did possess was held in check by 
wretched health throughout his life. The neglected body must 
restrict the activity of the intellect, however carefully that intel- 
lect may be cherished. And, last, he abhorred publicity. Even 
after he became the recognized chief of the writers of his day, no 
man was less familiar to the British public than England's great- 
est living poet. He wrote some sixty poems in English and Latin, 
but only twelve were published during his lifetime, and none of 
his prose appeared till after his death. 

An examination of Gray's poetry reveals a steady progress 
toward romanticism. In his early verses he shows unmistakably 
the influence of Dryden and Pope. There is the same conventional 
moralizing, the same delight in personified abstractions, and the 
same trip-hammer regularity of rhythm that pleased the stilted 
ages of Anne and the Georges. There is little that foreshadows 
the Gray of the Pindaric Odes and the Norse Fragments. The 
three odes, On the Spring, On a Distant Prospect of Eton College, 
and To Adversity, written in 1742, have nothing of the spirit of 
romanticism, and "might have been written by any Augustan of 
sufficient talent." These compositions, with two didactic frag- 



GRAY. . 101 

ments, De Princijnis Cogitandi and On the Alliance of Education 
and Government, constitute the work of Gray's first poetic period. 
Tlie Elegy, which may be taken as representative of his second 
period, is not, indeed, purely romantic, though it differs widely 
from his earlier work. He had not yet freed himself from moral- 
izing, and this was the quality which recommended the poem to 
Gray's contemporaries. What has rendered it immortal is its 
absolute perfection of language, — a beauty that his own age 
recognized but slowly. It has, too, a faultless evolution. Every 
line and each word has its own office. Not one could be altered 
without changing the thought. Here he first broke away from the 
cold laws of classicism (see note on line 60 of the Elegg). There 
are fewer personifications, more natural touches, and a recognition 
of English examples as sufficient to point the moral of his song. In 
the evolution of Gray's style, no one fact is of greater significance 
than his use of the names Hampden, Milton, and Cromwell in this 
poem. The spirit of nationalism triumphed over the Augustan 
adoration of Greece and Rome. 

In the Pindaric odes (Progress of Poesy, 1754, and The Bard, 
1757), Gray struck out in advance of his age, and helped to change 
its literary taste. The odes w^ere not popular ; people could not 
understand them, and, for that reason, ridiculed their obscurity. 
Their warmth could not thaw the ice of eighteenth-century for- 
mality. They are romantic in theme, stirring in treatment, perfect 
in form. The public was dazzled, and denied a beauty that in its 
blindness it could not see. 

Gray's third period owes its inspiration to Mallett's Introduction 
to the History of Denmark, published in 1755. This volume had a 
profound influence on the changing spirit of the poet, and stirred 
him to an enthusiastic study of Norse mythology. Here was a 
field rich in romantic themes, and Gray's appreciation is seen in 
IVie Fatal Sisters (1761), The Descent of Odin (1764), and The 
Triumphs of Owen (1764). They are lyrics, pure and simple, 
"swallow-flights of song." In his Observations on English Metre, 
written probably in 1760-61, though first published in 1814, occurs 
a passage which clearly indicates his feeling toward the end of his 
life. " The more we attend to the composition of Milton's har- 



102 GRAY. 

mony," he writes, "the more we shall be sensible how he loved to 
vary his pauses, his measures, and his feet, which gives that 
enchanting air of freedom and vs^ildness to his versification, uncon- 
fined by any rules but those which his own feeling and the nature 
of his subject demands." 

Gray's merits as a poet consist in part in a musical sweetness of 
versification and a singular felicity of expression. Greater than 
these, perhaps, is his perfect art. " Gray," says Matthew Arnold, 
" holds his high rank as a poet not merely by the grace and beauty 
of passages in his poems ; not merely by a diction generally pure 
in an age of impure diction : he holds it, above all, by the power 
and skill with which the evolution of his poems is conducted.'* 
They do not end, as is often the case with minor poets, simply 
because all poems must have an end somewhere, but because his 
theme is complete. In all, there is an evident plan, a growth of 
thought, a subordination of the less to the more essential part, and 
a clear relation between the beginning and the end. His greatest 
defects are an excess of allegory, something too much rhetoric, 
and personification so vague that Coleridge says, "it depends 
wholly on the compositor's putting or not putting a capital, 
whether the words should be personifications or mere abstracts." 
His merits are his own; his defects were due to his age as much as 
to himself. To (^ray and Goldsmith, prophets of the new spirit in 
poetry, we owe much for what they did ; still more, perhaps, for 
the inspiration they furnished to the poets who came after them. 



ELEGY WRITTEN IN A COUNTRY CHURCHYARD. 

It is very generally agreed that the Elegy was begun in 1742, 
finished in 1750, and then circulated privately among a few friends 
of the poet. Early in 1751, Gray received a letter from the editors 
of the Magazine of Magazines, an inferior periodical, asking per- 
mission to publish the poem. This request Gray was unwilling to 
grant, and on February 11th wrote to his friend Walpole and 
requested him to have Dodsley, the London printer, publish the 
Elegy at once. Walpole lost no time, and on February 28th the 



ELEGY. 103 

poem was issued anonymously in a quarto pamphlet, with the 
following prefatory advertisement : " The following poem came 
into my hands by accident, if the general approbation with which 
this little piece has been spread may be called by so slight a term 
as accident. It is this approbation which makes it unnecessary for 
me to make any apology but to the author : as he cannot but feel 
some satisfaction in having pleased so many readers already, 1 
flatter myself he will forgive my connnunicating that pleasure to 
many more." 

The poem was immediately reproduced in the magazines, and 
received a popular favor unsurpassed by any English composition. 
This popularity has continued until the present. Edition has fol- 
lowed edition in rapid succession ; it has been translated into 
many foreign languages, living and dead; and, perhaps the surest 
evidence of favor, it has been frequently parodied. Conjectures as 
to the causes that inspired the poem and interesting facts concern- 
ing its publication may be found in Gosse's Life of Gray, pp. 66, 
96. 

1. Gray quotes from Dante, Purgatory, Canto VIII. See transla- 
tions by Longfellow or Cary, opening lines of this canto. The word 
curfew occurs frequently in Shakespeare and at least twice in Milton, 
II Penseroso, 1. 74, and Comus, 1. 435. For a description of the custom 
referred to, see Chamber's Encyclojicedia, Vol. III. p. 621, or Mont- 
gomery's Leading Facts of English History, p. 86. 

2. Wind: is sometimes written 'winds.' Which is better? 
Why ? The student should read Collin's Ode to Evening. While 
there are few verbal similarities between it and the Elegy, the tones 
of the poems are so similar that comparison may be made profitable. 
With reference to this line, note especially stanza X. 

7. Cf. Macbeth, Act III. sc. ii. ; Ode to Evening, stanza III. ; and 
Lyciclas, 1. 28. 

13. " The yew-tree under which Gray often sat in Stoke churchyard 
still exists there ; it is on the south side of the church, its branches 
spread over a large circumference, and under it, as well as under its 
shade, there are several graves." (Bradshaw's edition of Gray's 
Works, p. 21.5.) 

16. Rude forefathers : ' rude ' refers to their rustic simplicity. It 



104 GRAY. 

should, be remembered that throughout the poem Gray has in mind the 
poor. They were buried outside tlie church ; tlie ricli inside. This 
custom prevailed in Gray's time and long before, but has since been 
abandoned. This stanza and the ninth form the inscription on Gray's 
monument in Stoke Park. 

20. Lowly bed : these words have by some editors been understood 
to refer to the grave. It seems much better, however, to take the 
expression literally. 

21. Wakefield quotes Thomson, Winter, 1. 311 ff., a passage of 
marked similarity ui thought and in expression. 

22. Ply her evening care : annotators have objected to this phrase. 
'* To ply a care," ^Nlitford says, " is an expression not proper to our 
language"; and Hales remarks: "This was probably the kind of 
phrase which led Wordsworth to pronounce the language of the Elegy 
unintelligible." Ply is a shortened form of apply, and is used by 
Milton as Gray uses it here. See Paradise Lost, IV. 1. 264 ; also 
Thomson, Winter, 1. 114. Whether the phrase be good or bad, it is 
the kind of diction against which Wordsworth so vigorously protested. 
When he had occasion to describe a similar scene, he wrote : — 

"And she I cherished, turned her loheel 
Beside an English fire." 

26. Broke: see Abbott's Shakespearian Grammar, p. 343. 

27. Drive their team afield : in Lijcidas, 1. 27, is a phrase almost 
identical with this. Milton's influence is easily recognized in Gray's 
poetry. The study of the lyrics should enable the student to discover 
for himself many interesting parallels. A few are indicated ; a little 
investigation on the part of the class will bring to light many more. 

29. This stanza was used by Burns as a motto for his Cotter'' s Sat- 
urday Night. As has often been pointed out, the rhymes are poor, 
despite which the last line is perhaps the most famous in the whole 
range of English verse. 

33. Wolfe, when sailing down the St. Lawrence on the night he 
attacked Quebec, is said to have repeated this poem to his brother 
officers. When he had finished, he said, "I would rather be the 
author of that poem than take Quebec." How often must these 
words have recurred to his liearers as a pathetic prophecy of Wolfe's 
untimely end. Cf. note on 1. 16. Mitford suggests that Gray may 



ELEGY. 105 

have had in mind the following verses from Monody on Queen Caro- 
line, by his friend Richard West : — 

" Ah me ! what boots us all our boasted power, 
Our golden treasure, and our purple state? 
They cannot ward the inevitable hour, 
Nor stay the fearful violence of fate." 

35. A-waits: Mitford and Mason read "await," thinking that 
the subject was "the boast of heraldry," etc. Awaits is the form in 
Gray's manuscript and in all editions corrected by him. The inver- 
sion, too, is very common in Gray. 

36. Hayley {Life of Crashaio, in Biographia Britannicd) says that 
this line is "literally translated from the Latin prose of Bartholinus 
in his Danish Antiquities.'''' 

43. Provoke : is used in its Latin sense. Mitford says " This use 
is unusually bold, to say the least." Cf. Pope, Essay on Criticism^ 
1. 528 and note. 

51. "Rage is often used in the post-Elizabethan writers of the 
seventeenth century, and in the eighteenth century writers, for inspira- 
tion, enthusiasm." {Hales.) 

53-56. This stanza has been furnished with many "originals." 
The thought is old, and had been many times expressed before Gray 
fixed for it an unchangeable form. In Churchill's Gotham (IL 1. 19), 
published in 1764, line 56 of the Elegy is quoted. This fact suggests 
that by that time the line, now so well known, had become a familiar 
quotation. Those who wish to compare expressions should look up 
Hall's Contemplations., VL 872 ; Young's Universal Passion, V. ; Pope, 
Bajye of the Lock, IV. 1. 158 ; Waller's song, Go, Lovely Bose, etc. 
See also Gray's Ode at the Installation, 11. 71-76. 

57. John Hampden lived in Buckinghamshire, the county that con- 
tains the churchyard made immortal by this poem. He was a cousin 
of Oliver Cromwell, and in 1636 refused to pay the ship-money tax 
levied by Charles I. without the authority of Parliament. It will be 
noticed that Gray praises Hampden more than Cromwell, who was 
still very generally misunderstood. 

59. Milton finished Paradise Lost at a cottage in the village of 
Chalfont St. Giles, a few miles from Stoke Pogis. Look over your 
Macaulay's Milton. 

60. " The prejudice against Cromwell was extremely strong through- 



106 GRAY. 

out the eighteenth century, even amongst the more liberal minded. . . . 
His wise statesmanship, his unceasing earnestness, his high-minded 
purpose, were not yet seen." {Hales.) 

This stanza is important as an illustration of Gray's transition from 
the classic to the romantic. The Elegy stands betw^een his period of 
classicism and his more imaginative poetry. Originally this stanza 
read : — 

" Some village Cato, with dauntless breast 

The little tyrant of his fields withstood ; 

Some mute inglorious TuUy here may rest ; 

Some Csesar, guiltless of his country's blood." 

The change from the Latin names to those of comparatively recent 
history is full of significance. The spirit of nationalism has entered. 
English heroes are good enough for English readers. Trifling as it 
may appear to us now, Gray's desertion of classic names was a bold 
movement that carried him a long distance in the right direction. 
72. Here originally were inserted the following four stanzas : — 

" The thoughtless world to majesty may bow, 
Exalt the brave and idolize success ; 
But more to innocence their safety owe, 

Than power or genius e'er conspired to bless. 

"And thou, who mindful of the unhonored dead, 
Dost in these notes their artless tale relate, 
By night and lonely contemplation led 
To wander in the gloomy walks of fate : 

" Hark ! how the sacred calm that breathes around. 
Bids every tierce tumultuous passion cease ; 
In still, small accents whispering from the ground, 
A grateful earnest of eternal peace. 

'' No more with reason and thj^self at strife 

G^ve anxious cares and endless wishes room ; 
But through the cool sequestered vale of life 
Pursue the silent tenor of thy doom." 

Mason considers the third of these rejected stanzas equal to any in the 
whole Elegy. 



ELEGY. 107 

73. Far from the madding crowd : has been adopted as the 
title of a novel by Thomas Hardy. So also the Annals of the Poor 
(1. 32) is the title of Leigh Richmond's well-known work. 'Madden- 
ing' would be a more correct formation, but Gray's use of the word 
' madding ' has given it currency. 

81. Epitaphs are famous for their ridiculous blunders. Under the 
yew-tree, in whose shade Gray wrote this poem, is a tombstone with 
ill-shaped letters and several words incorrectly spelled. In the in- 
scription that Gray composed for his aunt's tomb, the word ' resur- 
rection ' is wrongly spelled. 

85-88. This stanza is ambiguous. We may take prey in apposi- 
tion with -who or with being. Which is better ? 

90. Of. Pope, Elegy on an Unfortunate Lady, 1. 49 ff. 

89-92. This stanza gives a poetic answer to the question proposed 
in the preceding lines. Gray, in a note, quotes from Petrarch, Sonnet 
169. Nott's translation is as follows : — 

"These, my sweet fair, so warns prophetic thought, 
(Closed thy bright eye, and mute thy poet's tongue) 
E'en after death shall still with sparks be fraught." 

Line 92 closely resembles one in Chaucer, Beeve''s Prologue, 1. 3880. 
"It has been suggested that the first line of this stanza seems to 
regard the near approach of death ; the second, its actual advent ; 
the third, the time immediately succeeding its advent ; the fourth, 
a time still later." (Bradshaw, Gray's Poetical Works, p. 225.) 

93-96. It will be observed that this stanza is the second of the 
rejected stanzas quoted above, slightly altered. Originally the fol- 
lowing stanza was inserted : — 

" If chance that e'er some pensive spirit more 
By sympathetic musings here delayed. 
With vain though kind inquiry shall explore 
Thy once loved haunt, this long-deserted shade." 

98. Peep of da-wn : cf. Comus, 11. 138-142, and Gray's Listalla- 
tion Ode, 11. 30, 31. 

100. Lawn : in Milton and Gray indicates nothing artificial, but 
means 'a cleared place in a wood.' See Lycidas, 11. 25-27; also 



108 GRAY. 

Deserted Village, 1. 35, After this stanza, originally appeared the 
following : — 

"Him have we seen the greenwood side along, 
While o'er the heath we hied, our labor done. 
Oft as the woodlark piped his farewell song, 
With wistful eyes pursue the setting sun." 

Mason wonders "that he rejected this stanza, as it not only has the 
same sort of Doric delicacy which charms us peculiarly in this part of 
the poem, but also completes the account of the whole song." 

105-112. These two stanzas are inscribed on the monument to 
Gray in Stoke Park. 

115. For thou can'st read : the ability to read could not be taken 
for granted ; it was an accomplishment not much more common than 
good reading is to-day. Brad.shaw understands the clause as a poetical 
turn which by its repetition adds vividness to the old swain's speech. 

116. After this stanza Gray originally had : — 

" There scattered oft, the earliest of the year. 

By hands unseen are showers of violets found ; 
The redbreast loves to build and warble there, 
And little footsteps lightly press the ground." 

What reason can yau suggest for omitting this quatrain, which Lowell 
says "cannot be obliterated from the memory of men, even if Gray 
did run his pen through it " ? 

119. Science : is here a general term for knowledge. 



THE PROGRESS OF POESY. 

This ode was written at Cambridge, in 1754, but was not printed 
till 1757, when with the Bard it was issued from the press of 
Horace Walpole at Strawberry Hill, with the title: ''Odes hij Mr. 
Gray, printed at Strawberry Hill, for R. & J. Dodsley in Pall 
iVIalL MDCCLVII." Walpole, wi'iting to Sir Horace Mann, de- 
scribes the odes as " amazing," " Shakespearian," " Pindaric," 
" sublime," and " consequently," he adds, " I fear a little obscure." 
So the public found them. In a later edition (1768) Gray added 



THE PROGRESS OF POEST. 109 

explanatory notes, stating very frankly in a sarcastic advertisement 
why he did so. " When the author first published this and the 
following ode, he was advised even by his friends to subjoin some 
few explanatory notes ; but had too much respect for the under- 
standing of his readers to take that liberty." The part of Gray's 
notes that could assist the student are given below ; those that tend 
to confuse him are omitted. 

The English Pindaric Ode. 

In Gray's day the ode had long held a place in English litera- 
ture. Ben Jonson wrote an ode, divided, as Pindar's were, into 
strophe, antistrophe, and epode, terms derived from the movements 
of the Greek chorus. These parts Jonson called respectively the 
turn, counterturn, and stand. Cowley's Pindaric odes appeared 
in 1656. These, however, were not imitations of the Greek poet, 
but shapeless products of the Englishman's fancy. His stanzas 
are verse groups of irregular length, ending with a long line, and 
he thought that his variations made his compositions Pindaric. 
The complexity of Pindar's metre was mistaken for lawlessness. 
The measure gained favor rapidly and became the favorite form 
for poet-laureates. Shapelessness was indeed well suited to their 
vapid utterance. Congreve " cured the Pindaric madness." In 
1706 he published a Pindaric entirely correct in form. The pref- 
ace is a Discourse on the Pindaric Ode, -in which he said: "The 
character of these late Pindarics is a bundle of rambling, inco- 
herent tlioughts, expressed in a like parcel of irregular stanzas. . . . 
On the contrar}^, there is nothing more regular than the odes of 
Pindar." Gray was the most famous writer of Pindarics after 
Cowley and Congreve ; his Progress of Poesy and Bard are the 
best English poems in this form . 

As is indicated in the text, the Progress of Poesy is divided into 
three stanzas of forty-one lines each. Each stanza is again divided 
into the three parts, — strophe, antistrophe, and epode. The three 
strophes, antistrophes, and epodes are identical in structure, and 
the whole poem, therefore, is absolutely symmetrical, and a correct 
imitation of the Greek odes. 



110 GRAY. 

The motto is from Pindar, Ohjmp. 11. 11. 153, 154. Gray, in a 
letter (1763) to Rev. James Brown, writes: "The odes, ... as 
their motto shows, were meant to be vocal to the intelligent alone. 
How far they were, in my om^i country, Mr. Howe can testify; and 
yet my ambition was terminated by that small circle." A writer 
in the Critical Review suggested that the author might have 
added : — 

es 
A^ TO irav epjxev^ijiv xar^fei. 

" For the many there is need of an interpreter." 

In the edition of 1768 the suggestion was adopted. 

1. Gray quotes Psalms, Ivii. 8, " Awake, my glory ; awake, lute 
and harp." What is his inaccuracy ? .Solian lyre was mistaken 
by the Critical Review for the harp of ^olus, or wind-harp. Gray 
added this note, "Pindar styles his own poetry with its musical 
accompaniments, ^olian song, ^olian strings, the breath of the 
JEolian flute." 

1-12. "The subject and simile, as usual with Pindar, are united. 
The various sources of poetry . . , are here described." {Gray.) 

3. Helicon's harmonious springs : two springs, Hippocrene and 
Aganippe, sacred to the Muses, were in the Helicon range of moun- 
tains in Boeotia. 

7. Cf. Thomson, Liberty, II. 1. 256 ff. ; Pope, Ode on St. Cecilia's 
Day, 1. 11. 

10. Amain : means literally with force ; we still have the phrase 
'with might and main.' Cf. Milton, Lycidas, 1. 111. 

12. Rebello"w : is imitated from the Latin rehoare. Rolfe quotes 
Pope, Iliad, " Rocks rebellow to the roar." 

13-24. "Power of harmony to calm the turbulent sallies of the 
soul. The thoughts are borrowed from the first Pythian of Pindar. ' ' 
{Gray.) 

14. Cf. Comus, 1. 555. 

15. Enchanting shell: i.e. the lyre. The allusion is to the myth 
that Hermes made the instrument from the shell of a tortoise. 

17. Thrace was one of the chief seats of the worship of Mars, the 
Lord of "War. 



THE PROGRESS OF POESY. Ill 

20. " This is a weak imitation of some incomparable lines in the 
same ode " (the first Pythian of Pindar). (Gray.) 

25-41. "Power of harmony to produce all the graces of motion in 
the body." (Gray.) 

27. Idalia : was a town in Cyprus, and contained a temple sacred 
to Venus. Pope uses the same form in his First Pastoral^ 1. 65. Dr. 
Johnson objects to the compound velvet-green on the ground that 
nature should not borrow from art. See his Life of Gray. 

29. Cytherea : a name for Venus. It was derived from Cytherea, 
an island in the ^gean, where many believed she had landed before 
she appeared on Cyprus. 

30. Antic and antique are the same. Cf. Milton, 11 PenserOso, 
1. 158. 

31. Frolic : is here used as an adjective. Milton has the word at 
least twice in the same usage. Cf. Comiis, 1. 59, and L^ Allegro, 1. 18. 
The rhythm of this line is suggestive of L'' Allegro. 

35. Gray quotes Odyssey, VIII. 1. 265. " He gazed with delight at 
the quick twinkling of the dancer's feet and was astonished at heart." 
Cf. Thomson, Spring, 1. 158. 

40-41. Gray's verse shows, as was pointed out in the sketch of his 
life, a gradual change from classicism to romanticism. But few of 
his lines show so warm a feeling as is here evinced, though this would 
be cold for Tennyson. Gray quotes from the tragic poet Phrynicus. 
A free translation is, "The light of love shines in her rosy 
cheeks." 

42-53. "To compensate the real and imaginary ills of life, the 
muse was given to mankind by the same Providence that sends the 
day by its cheerful presence to dispel the gloom and terrors of 
the night." (Gray.) 

43 ff. The personification of abstractions was one characteristic of 
the classic school of writers. These lines furnish the most striking 
illustration, in this poem, of Gray's fondness for this quality. Cf. 
the odes on Spring, Death of a Favorite Cat, Eton College, and the 
Hymn to Adversity. 

50. Birds of boding cry : called, in colloquial speech, screech- 
owls. 

52. The variations of lines 52 and 53 found in the manu- 
scripts are given to show the care with which Gray's verses were 
written : — 



his glittering shafts 



112 GEAY. 

'*Till fierce Hyperion from afar 

Pours on their scattered rear 
Hurls at " flying " 

" o'er " scattered " f of war. 

" " " shadowy " j 
Till " " " " from far 

Hyperion hurls around," etc. 

Hyperion, i.e. the sun, was a Titan, the father of the sun, moon, and 
stars. Cf. Lowell, Vision of iSir Launfal, 1. 132 ff. Gray's note 
quotes inaccurately from Cowley's Pindaric ode, Brutus, 11. 55-57 : — 

" Or seen the morning's well-appointed star 
Come marching up the eastern hills afar." 

— Cowley. 

54-65. "Extensive influence of poetic genius over the remotest 
and most uncivilized nations, its connection with liberty, and the vir- 
tues that naturally attend on it. (See the Erse, Norwegian, and Welsh 
fragments, the Lapland and American songs.)" (Gray.) Solar 

road: the figure is a favorite with poets. See Virgil, uEneid., VI. 
1. 795 ; Uryden, Annus Mirahilis, stanza 160 ; Threnodia Augustalis, 
1. 353 ; and Pope, Essay on 3Ian, I. 1. 102. 

64. Rolfe quotes from Dugald Stewart, Philosophy of the Human 
Mind, "I cannot help remarking the effect of the solemn and uni- 
form flow of verse in this exquisite stanza, in retarding the pronuncia- 
tion of the reader, so as to arrest his attention to every successive 
picture, till it has time to produce its proper impression." 

66-82. "Progress of poetry from Greece to Italy and from Italy 
to England." {Gray.) 

68. Ilissus : is a river that flows through Athens. 

69. Mseander : see etymology of the verb ' meander.' 

70. Cf. Comns, 1. 232. 

82. Poetry is at its best in times of national progress and of great- 
est freedom. When Greece was conquered, poetry went to Rome ; 
and when Rome fell, to England. 

84. Nature's darling : "Shakespeare." (Gray.) Shakespeare is 
called a child of nature because he had little knowledge of Greek and 
Latin, the recognized learning of the sixteenth and seventeenth cen- 



THE PROGRESS OF POESY. 113 

turies. See Ben Jonsou's lines To the Memory of Shakespeare^ and 
Milton's UAUearo, 1. 132 ff. 

86. The mighty mother : may be either nature or poetry. 

89. Pencil : the etymology of this word will show its meaning 
here, 

91. Golden keys : cf. Comus, 1. 12, and Lycidas, 1. 110. 

95. Nor second he : " Milton." (Gray.) In a letter to Richard 
Hurd, Gray wrote : ''I have heard of nobody but a player and a doctor 
of divinity that profess their esteem for them [i.e. Gray's Pindarics']. 
Oh, yes ! a lady of quality who is a great reader. She knew there 
was a compliment to Dryden, but never suspected there was anything 
said about Shakespeare or Milton till it w\as explained to her ; and 
wishes there had been titles prefixed to tell what they were about." 

99. Gray quotes (inaccurately) from Ezekiel, Chap. i. 20, 26, 
and 28. 

102. Gray quotes from Odyssey, VIII. 1. 64. " (Though) deprived 
of sight, he gave sweet song." See Dr. Johnson's comment in Life 
of Gray. 

103. It is worthy of note that Gray places Shakespeare and Milton 
before Dryden, though he once advised Beattie to study Dryden, say- 
ing that "if there was any excellence in his own numbers, he had 
learned it wholly from that great poet." At the time when the Prog- 
ress of Poesy was written, Gray, like others whose romanticism was 
more pronounced, had given himself up to a veneration for Milton. 
His debt to Dryden was never forgotten. In 1765 he wrote to Beattie : 
" Remember Dryden, and be blind to his faults." 

106. "Meant to express the stately march and sounding energy 
of Dryden's rhymes." (Gray.) Ci. Vo-pe, Imitations from Horace, 
Ep. II. 1. 267 ff. 

109. Pictured urn: i.e. urn with pictures on it. Cf. Milton, 
II Penseroso, 1. 159, and Gray, Elegy, 1. 41. 

111. " We have had in our language no other odes of the sublime 
kind than that of Dryden on St. Cecilia'' s Day ; for Cowley (who had 
his merit) yet wanted judgment, style, and harmony for such a task. 
That of Pope is not worthy of so great a man. Mr. Mason, indeed, 
of late days, has touched the true chords, and with a masterly hand, 
in some of his choruses ; above all, in the last of Caractacus : — 



(( ( 



Hark ! heard ye not yon footstep dread ! ' etc." (Gray.) 

T 



114 GRAY. 

115. After quoting from Pindar, Ohjnip. II. 1. 159, Gray adds, 
" Pindar compares himself to that bird and his enemies to the ravens 
that croak and clamor in vain below, while it pursues its flight, regard- 
less of their noise." 

121-123. These lines show Gray's own character and his poetic 
aim ; at the same time there is a suggestion of the modesty that kept 
him in a secluded life. 



OLIVER GOLDSMITH. 

1728-1774. 



The year 1728 witnessed several events of importance in the 
history of English literature. Thomson published his Spring, Gay 
brought out the Beggar's Opera, and Pope sent forth the Dunciad. 
In this year was born Thomas Percy, who rescued from oblivion 
so many of our old English ballads ; and on the 10th of Xovember, 
Oliver Goldsmith was born at Pallas, County Longford, Ireland. 
Two years later, his father, a clergyman of the Established Church, 
secured a better living at Lissoy, and the Goldsmith family moved 
thither. Oliver's school-days were spent in idleness. At Trinity 
College (1744-1749) he did not mend his ways, and during the two 
years that followed his graduation he was contentedly dependent 
on the industry of his mother and the generosity of his friends. 
He made lazy attempts to teach, to take orders, to study law, and 
once set forth with half-hearted determination to make his fortune 
in America. He lacked the force of character that would have 
enabled him to fix a definite purpose and carry it out. All his 
plans were visionary; he failed in everything he undertook. His 
uncle Contarine finally furnished the improvident youth with 
money to start him in medical study at Edinburgh. 

For eighteen months Goldsmith studied, or pretended to study, 
at this university, and then, following one of his many restless 
impulses, rambled away on his famous Euroj^ean tour, with the 
ostensible purpose of continuing his study of medicine. Perhaps 
he did study some, though the only evidence for such assumption 
is the mention of Albinus and Glaubius, famous men at Leyden, 
in letters to the over-credulous uncle Contarine. It is more proba- 
ble that the time was passed in idling or gambling — vices which 

115 



116 GOLDSMITH. 

had always no small attraction for susceptible Goldsmith. He 
stayed at Leyden but a short time, and then, with but a guinea in 
his pocket, started upon his vagrant trip through the Continent, 

Little is known, though much has been conjectured, about this 
period of Goldsmith's life. Legend has it that he paid his way by 
performances on the flute, and many interesting stories have been 
based on the narrative of the philosophic vagabond in the Vicar of 
Wakejield. Boswell, Johnson's chattering biographer, tells us that 
the wanderer " disputed " his way through Europe. It seems more 
probable that he begged his way — an assumption that is justified 
by Goldsmith's custom both before and after this time. Some- 
where the vagrant picked up a medical degree, but how and where 
has never been related. 

On his return to London, in 1756, Goldsmith began his struggle 
for life. He had no money, no friends, and but few acquaintances. 
Even his appearance was against him, and his awkward presence 
and ugly face doubtless brought him many rebuffs. At length he 
secured employment in a chemist's shop, and later became a press- 
corrector for Samuel Richardson, 

While at Edinburgh, Goldsmith had been a fellow-student with 
a son of the Dr. Milner who kept a boys' school at Peckham, By 
the influence of this friend the press-corrector secured an appoint- 
ment as usher. Dr. Milner's daughter tells us that "this Lish 
usher of theirs was a remarkably cheerful and even facetious per- 
son, constantly playing tricks and practical jokes, amusing the 
boj^s by telling stories and by performances on the flute, living a 
careless life, and always in advance of his salary," By the Mil- 
ners, Goldsmith was introduced to Mr, Griffith, proprietor of The 
Monthly Review, who offered him board and lodging and a liberal 
salary to write articles of a critical nature for the magazine. 
Goldsmith closed with the offer, and thus began the hack-writing 
which for the rest of his life continued to be his vocation. He 
quarrelled with Griffith, as indeed he did with most of his employ- 
ers, but the publishers of the day furnished him with all that he 
could do. Lisually payment was made in advance, and the money 
was frequently sjDent long before the work was completed. He 
never lived within his income, and his efforts were always directed 



GOLDSMITH. 117 

toward paying up arrears. The work compiled under these circum- 
stances was widely varied, — a miscellaneous product of pamphlets, 
tracts, abridgments, essays, sketches, — in short, anything of a 
marketable nature. The Bee, The Citizen of the World, Histories 
of England, Rome, and Greece, a History of Animated Nature, and 
the Life of Beau Nash were among his tasks. The work was done 
to order, but none the less possessed a vivacity that secured for his 
compilations a wide popularity. He was not a historian and no 
more a naturalist. This the histories themselves abundantly testify. 
But he did make interesting books ; " he touched nothing he did 
not adorn." Johnson thouglit the Natural History would be as 
agreeable as a Persian tale. So indeed it is, and though the trea- 
tise has no value as a contribution to science, it shows the poet's 
sympathizing love for all that lives. 

But Goldsmith's fame does not rest on his task work. At inter- 
vals he turned from his drudgery and added a classic to our litera- 
ture. As an essayist, a novelist, a poet, and a playwright, his 
work entitles him to a place of honor in our literary history. In 
his contributions to The Bee and to The Citizen of the World, he 
was an imitator of Addison and of Steele. But he does not end 
in imitation. In the Vicar of Wakefield, the character essay is 
invested witli a new charm. The sketches are united into a con- 
tinuous plot. Goldsmith herein exemplifies a change that is sig- 
nificant in the literary history of his time. All that the Sir Roger 
de Coverley Papers lack of being a novel is the unified and height- 
ened interest that belongs to a regularly constructed plot. This 
want Goldsmith supplied in the plan that correlates the characters 
of his prose-pastoral — a work that Carlyle called " the best of all 
modern idylls." In comedy he led the revolt against the affected 
sentimentalism then prevailing, and inaugurated a new era of the 
drama. It was with difficulty that Colman, the manager of Covent 
Garden Theatre, was persuaded to present The Good-natured Man 
and She Stoops to Conquer, fearing that the " vulgar humors " of 
the plays would shock the hypersensitive feelings of the theatre- 
goers of that age. In The Traveller and The Deserted Village Gold- 
smith is again ahead of his time. In form they are similar to that 
required by the fashion in the preceding age, but their spirit is 



118 GOLDSMITH. 

essentially that of the new literary and social England. Gold- 
smith's position is anomalous ; he belongs to neither the old nor 
the new school. The new spirit is disguised in a solemn garb of 
classic style. " He filled old bottles with new wine," not in a sin- 
gle department, but in all the varied forms of his compositions. 
He improved on his predecessors and made a high standard for 
those of later time. 

Goldsmith, the man, was marked by many seeming contradic- 
tions in character. He earned sufficient money to pay his debts, 
to make himself comfortable, and, indeed, to obtain some few of 
life's luxuries. Had his earnings been twice as much as they were, 
he would doubtless have spent more than his income. Extrava- 
gance was a part of his nature. He was always improvident and 
never seemed able to realize the value of money. Experience 
taught him nothing ; past folly was forgotten when the trouble it 
occasioned had gone. This weakness made his whole life one of 
embarrassment and disgrace. An oft-repeated anecdote of John- 
sou and Goldsmith is so characteristic of the poet that we give it 
here. Johnson one day received a letter from Goldsmith, implor- 
ing him to come at once to his relief. Johnson sent a guinea by 
the messenger and promised to follow as "speedily as he could. 
When he arrived, he found that Goldsmith had been arrested by 
his landlady for arrears of rent. On the table stood a bottle of 
Madeira, for which a part of the guinea had been already ex- 
changed. Goldsmith's clothes had been seized by his landlady, 
and the poet was in a towering passion. Johnson persuaded him 
to be calm and discuss the means by which he might be extricated. 
It was on this occasion that Johnson sold The Vicaj^ of Wakefield 
for the sum of £60, with which the landlady's claims were satis- 
fied, and Goldsmith was once again set free. Doubtless in the poet's 
life there were many similar episodes. Only the moment concerned 
him ; to-morrow's needs always seemed the demands of a future too 
remote to deserve serious consideration. Forster, in his biography 
of Goldsmith, rates mankind roundly for a lack of appreciation 
in permitting this genius to importune the " draggle-tailed muses " 
so vainly. The criticism is unjust and foolish. Goldsmith was 
well paid for all he did ; if he chose to squander his money and 



THE TRAVELLER. 119 

run in debt, the world was not to blame, nor should Goldsmith, 
more than other men, escape the consequences of folly. It is better 
to recognize his failing frankly. By so doing, we evince no lack 
of affection for the poet who contributed so much to the develop- 
ment of our literature. The possession of genius does not exempt 
a man from the obligation of paying his debts. Despite his laxity 
in financial matters, lie was never in want of credit. " Was ever 
poet so trusted !" exclaimed Johnson, when told, after Goldsmith'.s 
death, that he had died £2000 in debt. The world had paid him 
this much more than he had earned. There is little excuse for the 
cry of ingratitude and inappreciation. Toward the end of his life, 
the embarrassments increased. More and more deeply he became 
involved in difficulties from which he could find no escape. They 
preyed on his spirits and undermined his health, till at last he 
fell sick. He doctored himself and would permit no physician to 
be called. His friends took alarm, but despite their protests he 
persisted in his obstinate course until it was too late for medical 
skill to be of any help. He died on the 4th of April, 1774. 

Goldsmith was loved by all who knew him. Burke, when told 
of his death, burst into tears, and Reynolds put aside his brush. 
While the poet lay dying, the stairs leading to his chambers were 
thronged by wretched creatures whose distress his generous hand 
had often relieved when he himself was in sorer straits. There 
was in his character nothing selfish, nor sordid, nor mean. He 
was simple, genuine, unaffected; these qualities of his character 
shine in quiet beauty in the tender pathos, the quaint humor, the 
pure diction and grace of touch that mark all he wrote, and lend 
to even his hack-w^ork a singular dignity. Johnson, who was long 
one of the poet's nearest friends, gives advice that we may well 
follow : " Let not his frailties be remembered : he was a very great 
man." 

THE TRAVELLER. 

This poem, dedicated to his brother, and the first to which Gold- 
smith signed his name, was published in December, 1764. It had 
been begun in 1755, while the poet was in Switzerland, but re- 



120 GOLDSMITH. 

mained uncomj^leted until shortly before its publication. The 
success of the poem was immediate and unqualified ; four editions 
were needed in eight months, and before the author's death five 
more were issued. Johnson wrote a favorable notice of the poem 
for the Critical Review. The members of the "Literary Club " could 
hardly credit the " newspaper essayist " and " literary drudge " with 
a poem of the elevated diction and the sound sense that charac- 
terize llie Traveller. Goldsmith had been known as a stammering- 
talker, plainly at a disadvantage with the skilled conversationalists 
who were his associates. The Traveller raised him at once to his 
proper place among his intellectual peers. 

It is possible that a suggestion of this poem may have been made 
by Addison's Letters from Italy. The poet Thomson seems to 
have had in mind a poem similar in plan to The Traveller. In a 
letter to a friend, he wrote, " A poetical landscape of countries, 
mixed with moral observations on their character and people, 
would not be an ill-judged undertaking." It was reserved for 
Goldsmith to execute this plan in a manner peculiarly his own. 
To describe the poem as a poetic diary would be unjust; yet it is 
certain that the poet's personal observations during his European 
travel are presented with the sincerity of feeling that characterizes 
a generous, honest heart. 

1. Slow: at a meeting of the club shortly after this poem appeared, 
one of the members asked Goldsmith if by ' slow ' he meant tardiness 
of locomotion. "Yes," he replied; but Johnson caught him up, 
exclaiming, " No, sir, you did not mean tardiness of locomotion ; you 
meant that sluggishness of mind which comes upon a man in solitude." 
"Ah, that was what I meant," returned Goldsmith. From this epi- 
sode arose a suspicion that Johnson wrote the line, as well as many 
others ; but Boswell's curiosity set the world right. Johnson, at his 
biographer's request, marked the lines which he contributed to Tlie 
Traveller^ and they will be indicated in the notes. Whichever mean- 
ing the poet had in mind, he chose the right word. 

2. Scheldt and Po : these rivers mark the geographical limits 
of the travels described in the poem. The Scheldt flows north from 
France, through Belgium and Holland. 

3. Cunningham wrote (1853), " Carinthia still retains its char- 



THE TRAVELLER. 121 

acter for inhospitality . " The province is in Austria and east of the 
Tyrol. Goldsmith's visit vv^as made in 1755. 

5. Campania : Goldsmith undoubtedly refers to the Campagna, 
an unhealthful, malarious plain near Rome. The spelling in the text 
seems to be without any authority, and is misleading, from the fact 
that there is a province named Campania, south of the central part 
of Italy. 

10. The thought of this line is expanded by Washington Irving, 
in The Sketch-Book, sketch called The Voyage. Goldsmith has the 
same thought in The Citizen of the World, Letter III. It may be found 
also in Gibber's (1671-1757) Commercial Lover. 

13-22. Cf. Deserted Village, 11. 149-162, where this thought is more 
fully developed. 

17. In the first edition this line reads : — 

" Blest be those feasts where mirth and peace abound." 

23. Me : is the object of the verb leads, 1. 29. 

27. The attention of the student is directed to the combination of 
simile and metaphor in this passage. Comment on such arrangement 
may be found in the rhetorics by A. S. Hill and J. D. Quackenbos. 

32. I sit me do-wn : cf. Deserted Village, 1. 86. A similar use of 
' sit ' may be found in Love''s Labor'' s Lost, Act I. sc. i. ; in Tennyson's 
Lotus Eaters : — 

" They sat them down upon the yellow sand," 

and in Milton, Paradise Lost, IX. 1. 1121. This reflexive use was 
common among the old writers and is recognized by both Webster 
and Worcester. Some grammarians give it as false syntax and would 
change 'sit' to 'set.' 

33. Cf. Deserted Village, 11. 188-190. 

41. School-taught pride : i.e. the pride felt by him who has been 
taught in the schools of the philosophers, especially of the Stoics. 

50. What is the construction of heir ? 

58. To see : this use of the infinitive is very common in Shake- 
speare, but is rarely found in modern writing. See Abbott's Shake- 
spearian Grammar, sec. 356. Cf. 1. 62. 

69. Line : equator, as in Tennyson's Enoch Arden, 1. 601. 

72. Why not ' give ' instead of gave ? 

73. Cf . Cowper's Task, Bk. II. 1. 206 ff. 



122 GOLDSMITH. 

84. Idra's cliff — Arno's shelvy side: Idra or Idria, rich in 
quicksilver mines, is in tlie ducliy of Carniola, Austria. Tlie Arno 
flows tlirough a fertile part of Italy. There is therefore a means of 
livelihood in both sterile and productive places. 

85. Frown: here means little more than 'are.' The emphatic 
idea of this line is in rocky-crested, and is contrasted with beds 
of down in the line following. 

87. Art : is here used in its widest sense. In 11. 146 and 304, it 
means 'the fine arts.' 

90. Hales suggests that the word either may be justified by sup- 
posing the blessings enumerated to be divided into two classes : 
(1) the one prevailing; (2) the others, which are cast into the shade 
by that prevailing one. Lines 91 and 92 are illustrations supporting 
the doubtful statements made in 89 and 90. Contentment does not 
necessarily 'fail' under wealth nor under freedom. In England com- 
merce has long prevailed, but we do not consider English merchants, 
let alone the English nation, as a band of rogues devoid of honor. 
A certain amount of freedom creates a desire for more, and discon- 
tent arises, not from the freedom granted, but from that withheld. 
Read Macaulay on the ills produced by newly acquired freedom 
(Essay on Milton^ p. 25, ed. by S. Thurber). See also Wordsworth's 
sonnet beginning — 

" When I have borne in memory what has tamed." 

101. Proper: own, in a kind of antithesis to 'mankind' in 
1. 102. 

108. "The stage often borrows similes and metaphors from nature ; 
here nature is made indebted to the stage." (Hales.) Cf. Milton's 
Paradise Lost, IV. 1. 137 ff. , and Virgil's ^neid, I. 1. 164. 

111-112. The lines imply that nature's bounty cannot satisfy the 
breast, and that therefore the sons of Italy are not blessed. Latin 
grammars describe such conditional forms as contrary to fact in 
present time. 

116. The varied year : the four seasons. 

118. Vernal lives : lives no longer than the spring. 

121. Gelid : the word is not poetic and is worthy of Dr. Johnson, 
The editor has failed to find the word in any other poet save Thom- 
son, who uses it twice in The Seasons. 

127. Manners : is used in the sense of the Latin mores., the custom 



THE TRAVELLER. 123 

or mode of life. Cf. Deserted Village^ 1. 74 ; Shakespeare, Lucrece, 
1. 1397 ; and Wordsworth, Sonnet to 3Iilton. 

129. Zealous : in a religious sense. It does not seem clear that 
poverty and gravity are faults, so much as they are misfortunes. 
These qualities, blameless in themselves, are here contrasted with 
positive vices. 

134. When commerce proudly flourished: it was in the fif- 
teenth century that the Italian republics, Venice, Genoa, Florence, and 
Pisa, were at the height of their prosperity. 

136. Long-fallen : i.e. since the days of old Rome. The reference 
in this and the following lines is to the Italian renaissance in the 
fifteenth century. At this period of Italy's history, architecture, 
sculpture, and painting were at their zenith. 

140. The Mediterranean was the means of communication between 
east and west until the sea route round the Cape of Good Hope was 
discovered by Magellan, 1497. This, and the discovery of America, 
were two main causes for the decline of Italian commerce. 

143. Skill : is used in its older sense of ' knowledge.' 

150. The pasteboard triumph : refers to the carnival mummeries, 
modern Italy's substitute for the real splendor of the old Roman 
triumphs. 

153. Irving says that Sir Joshua Reynolds called upon Goldsmith 
one morning while he was engaged in the composition of this poem. 
The poet was sitting at his desk and engaged in the double occupation 
of writing The Traveller and teaching a pet dog to " sit up." At one 
moment he glanced his eye at his desk and the next shook his finger at 
the dog. "The last lines on the page were still wet; they form part 
of the description of Italy. 

" ' By sports like these are all their cares beguiled. 
The sports of children satisfy the child.' 

Goldsmith joined in the laugh caused by his whimsical enjoyment, and 
acknowledged that his boyish sport with the dog suggested the stanza." 

159. Domes: is used in the poetic sense of mansion or palace. 
Cf. Deserted Village., 1. 319, and Byron, Childe Harold, canto I. 
stanza XXIV. 

167. Bleak Sw^iss their stormy mansion tread : bleak, applied 
to the Swiss, is one of the most striking instances of a figure frequently 



124 GOLDSMITH. 

found in Goldsmith's writing. What is the figure ? Find other 
instances. Mansion: is used in its literal (now obsolete) sense of 
an abiding place. Cf. Milton's Comus, L 2 ; II Penseroso, 1. 93 ; 
John, xiv. 2. 

170. Man and steel : must be taken together, and as explained by 
the rest of the line means armed troops. Goldsmith does not mean 
that steel is found in Switzerland's mountains. The soldier and 
his sword : from the middle of the seventeenth century Swiss mer- 
cenaries were employed throughout Europe, especially in France and 
Spain. Read Chap. VII. Bk. II. of Carlyle's French Bevolution. 
Reed says, "In many of our old plays the guards attendant on 
kings are called Switzers, and that without any regard to the country 
where the scene lies." Cf. Hamlet, Act. IV. sc. v. 1. 80. 

174. With this suggestion of the power of a storm in the Alps, cf. 
Byron's Childe Harold, canto III. 

176. Redress : here means to make amends for ; cf . 1. 214, where 
redrest means ' supplied.' 

178. This line furnishes the reason for the content mentioned in 

I. 175 — there is nothing to excite envy. 

186. Breasts : is the reading in all the early editions, and this line 
is quoted in Johnson's Dictionary to illustrate the verb. 'Breathes' 
is found in the Globe edition and a few others. A misprint seems to 
be the only reason for such change. 

190. Savage : is rarely used as a noun except with reference to 
human beings. Cf. Citizen of the World, I., and As You Like It, Act 

II. sc. vi. 1. 6. 

194. Cf. Gray's Elegy, 1. 21. 

198. Nightly : means simply » for the night,' instead of a series of 
nights, as usual. Shakespeare often has the word in this sense. In 
the petition, " Give us this day our daily bread," ' daily ' has a similar 
use. For a picture somewhat similar, cf. Deserted Village, 11. 155-160. 

219, 220. Is the metaphor clear ? 

221. Level : means unvaried, monotonous. 

232. Fall : is the form correct ? How may it be defended ? 

234. Cowering : means brooding, and includes no idea of fear. 

243. Perhaps some of Goldsmith's experiences were the basis for 
these lines. See Vicar of Wakefield, Chap. XX., "History of a 
Philosophic Vagabond." 

253. Gestic lore : in Webster's Dictionary this line is quoted to 



THE TRAVELLER. 125 

illustrate 'gestic' in the sense of "pertaining to feats of arms." 
With such meaning the phrase becomes pointless. There is no pro- 
priety in assigning skill in arms to the dancing grandsire, while there 
is an eminent fitness in saying he was a good dancer. Scott uses the 
word at least twice in this sense ; once in the Abbot, Chap. XXVII., 
where he describes Catherine Seyton as skilled in gestic lore ; and 
again in Peveril of the Peak, Chap. XXX., where, describing Eenella's 
performance before King Charles, he says that the king "seemed, like 
herself, carried away by the enthusiasm of the gestic art." The 
Standard Dictionary marks the word obsolete. 

256. Thus idly busy rolls their world away : ' idly busy ' is 
the rhetorical figure called oxymoron. Cf. Pope, Elegy on an Unfortu- 
nate Lady, 1. 81 ; Hamlet, Act III. sc. ii. 1. 253 ; As You Like It. Act 
II. sc. vii. 1. 23. 

265, 266. Campbell, in Specimens of the British Poets, referring 
to these two lines, says, "There is perhaps no couplet in English 
rhyme more perspicuously condensed than those two lines of The 
Traveller in which he describes the once flattering, vain, and unhappy 
character of the French." 

276. Frieze : is a coarse cloth brought originally from Friesland. 

277. Cheer : here means good fare. The derivation of the word 
should be noted. 

286. Rampire : poetic for rampart, meaning the dikes. 

297. Wave-subjected : the meaning here is not clear. Rolfe 
explains it as "lying below the level of the waves." This explana- 
tion, however, furnishes no cause for the " repeated toil" mentioned 
in the next line. If we take the passage to mean simply ' subject to 
inundation,' we have a clear relation of cause and effect, and a mean- 
ing in accord with the context. 

303. What is the subject of are ? 

306. Even liberty itself, etc. : this may refer to the custom which 
allowed a parent to sell his child's labor for a term of years. It is 
possible that an allusion is here made to the support which the Repub- 
licans, under the leadership of John and Cornelius De Witt, gave to 
the French in the time of Louis XIV. 

309 it. Goldsmith's attack on the Dutch is in no way justifiable. 
Many pages of their history must have been cut out before the book 
came into the poet's hands. This is not the only instance (Vid. 
Citizen of the World, Letter CXVIII.) in which he fails to show even 



126 GOLDSMITH. 

fairness to a hardy, industrious, heroic people. The debt of liberty, civil 
and religious, to the Netherlands cannot be unknown to the most casual 
reader. Goldsmith perhaps forgot that England's prowess had more 
than once yielded to Dutch valor. The bravery of William of Orange 
and William de la Marck and the long commercial supremacy of the 
Dutch should have guarded them from such prejudiced aspersions. 
310. Cf. Julius CcEsar, Act. I. sc. ii. 1. 135 ff. 

318. Cf. Citizen of the World, Letter CXIV. 

319. Lawns : cf. Deserted Village, 1. 35 ; Paradise Lost, IV. 
1. 252 ; and Citizen of the World, Letter CXIV. Arcadia, situated 
in the Peloponnesus, now the Morea, was taken by the poets as typical 
of pastoral simplicity and beauty. 

320. Hydaspes : is now called Jelum, a tributary to the Indus. 
Cf. Arnold's Sohrab and Bustum, 1. 412. 

327. Port : cf. Gray's Bard, 1. 117. 

351. Fictitious : is here nearly equal to factitious or artificial. 

365. ' ' The literature of the la.st century abounds with apostrophes to 
liberty. That theme was the great commonplace of the time. Goldsmith 
has his laugh at it in the Vicar of Wakefield, Chap. XIX." (Hales.) 

382-392. Chapter XIX. of the Vicar of Wakefield furnishes a 
prose commentary on these lines. Less exceiDtion might be taken 
to the sentiments here expressed were Goldsmith's audience the 
same as that harangued by the excellent vicar. 

388.' Slaves: the allusion, probably, is to the "nabobs," that is, 
Englishmen who purchased boroughs at home with the immense 
wealth gained in India. "In this way one man is said to have 
made eight members of Parliament." (Barrett.) 

397. The thought in the following passage reajDpears in the De- 
serted Village, 1. 275 ff. 

411. The sonorous sound of Oswego seems to have pleased Gold- 
smith's ear. Cf. Threnodia Augustalis, Part II. 1. 82. 

412. The pronunciation of Niagara that is here required by the 
metre is still common in England. See Lippincott's Gazetteer. 

420. This line was furnished by Johnson. 

429-434. Lines by Johnson. 

431. Cf. Paradise Lost, I. 1. 254. 

436. Luke's iron crown: in 1514 George and Luke Dosa headed 
a revolt in the Hungarian Republic. The insurrection was quickly 
suppressed, and George, not Luke as Goldsmith says, was tortured with 



THE DESERTED VILLAGE. 127 

a red-hot iron crown for allowing himself to be proclaimed king. 
Bos well {Life of Johnson) gives the name of the brothers as Zeck, 
and one of Goldsmith's editors (Corney) fell into the mistake. See 
Forster's Life of Goldsmith, Vol. I. p. 370. Damiens' bed of steel : 
Robert Francois Damiens attempted to assassinate Louis XV. of 
France. The French in punishment inflicted tortures that rivalled 
the horrors of the Inquisition. Incisions were made in his arms and 
legs and boiling oil was poured in the wounds. Hot resin and molten 
lead were poured over his body, excoriated with red-hot pincers. 
Finally a horse was fastened to each leg and arm, and after an hour 
of agony the wretch was torn asunder. See Smollett's History of 
England, Vol. V. Chap. 3. 



THE DESERTED VILLAGE. 

The Deserted Village was published in 1770. Its success at the 
time was greater than that of The Traveller had been six years 
before. Posterity reads both with interest^, but the later poem is 
the one by which Goldsmith is best known. In it he returns to 
some of the problems of the earlier poem, and makes his subject 
clearer by a contrast of varying conditions in the same nation. It 
furnishes particular instances by which the poet seeks to define 
what constitutes the real prosperity of a people. It is, however, a 
poetic effort, and any attempt to conform the poem to prosaic actuali- 
ties of geography or political economy must destroy the splendor of 
the vivid images, fashioned though they are of material furnished 
by observation and memory. No imaginative production should 
be examined with over-scrupulous nicety for an identity with fact. 
In a search for trivialities the art of the master and the true beauty 
of his work must be overlooked. With this warning the supposed 
prototypes will be mentioned in the notes, in the hope that they 
may heighten the student's interest in the poem, without hampering 
that interest by the suggestion of fancies that, after all is said, are 
unessential conjectures. The poem was dedicated to Sir Joshua 
Reynolds, the great English painter, who returned the compliment 
by dedicating to Dr. Goldsmith the famous painting Resignation, 
" an attempt to express a character in The Deserted Village" 



128 GOLDSMITH. 

1. Sweet Auburn : Lissoy is supposed to be the original of Au- 
burn, Dr. Strean, at one time curate of Kilkenny West and later of 
Atlilone, made the most intelligent effort to identify the two. Lissoy 
is a parish in Kilkenny West, where Goldsmith's father moved when 
Oliver was two years old. Howitt says that "it [Lissoy] now con- 
sists of a few common cottages by the roadside, on a flat and by no 
means particularly interesting scene." 

4. Parting: cf. 1. 363; also Gray's Elegij, 11. 1 and 89. 

12. Decent : the eighteenth-century use of this word, following its 
Latin derivation (dfecens), was equivalent to the modern 'becoming.' 
Cf. Pope, Essay on Criticism, 1. 319. 

17. Train : this is a favorite rhyme word with Goldsmith. It 
occurs seven times in this poem and twice in The Traveller^ thus 
affording a reason for the charge that he, like Pope, has some pet 
expressions that are overworked. 

23. Still : is used in a sense now obsolete, but usual in Shake- 
speare's day and common in the eighteenth century. 

27. Any school-boy will very willingly give a practical demonstra- 
tion of the meaning of this verse to any one whose " ignorance is bliss." 
In Hawthorne's Our Old Home, read the chapter entitled "A London 
Suburb." 

35. Lawn: here used in the sense of 'plain,' 1. 1. See also 
Tennyson, The Last Toimiament, 1. 371. Cf. The Traveller, 1. 319, 
and Gray's Elegy, 1. 100. 

44. In his Animated Nature, Goldsmith writes, "But of all these 
sounds [i.e. those made by geese, lapwings, jack-snipes, etc.] there is 
none so dismally hollow as the booming of the bittern." See Isaiah, 
xiv. 23, and xxxiv. 11. 

52. Cf. The Traveller, 1. 303 ff. See also Vicar of Wakefield, 
Chap. XIX. 

53-54. This thought has found favor with many writers. See 
Bacon's essay Of Great Place ; Burns's Cotter'' s Saturday Night, stanza 
XIX ; Thomson's Summer, 1. 423 ff. 

74. Manners : has rather the sense of customs. Cf. Deserted 
Village, 1. 127 and note. 

86. The same use of the pronoun me may be found in The Trav- 
eller, 1. 32. 

87. Husband out : means to economize. The same figure occurs 
in Macbeth^ Act. II. sc. i. 1. 4. 



THE DESERTED VILLAGE. 129 

101. Goldsmith has many repetitious of thought and phrase, Cf. 
note on 1. 17. -In The Bee he wrote, " By struggling with misfortunes, 
we are sure to receive some wound in the conflict : the only method 
to come off victorious is by running away." 

111-112. Cf. the rhymes of 11. 95 and 96. 

121. Cf. Julius Ccesar, Act. IV. sc. iii. 1. 27. 

124. In Animated Nature we find, "The nightingale's pausing 
song would be the proper epithet for this bird's music." Cf. note to 
1. 101. It is worth noting that the nightingale is not found in Ireland. 
The editor read in a newspaper not long since that ' ' a nightingale had 
been caught in the vicinity of the Deserted Village and would be of 
more than passing interest to students of Goldsmith." 

129. Investigators claim to have identified this woman with Cath- 
erine Geraghty. 

142. Forty pounds seems to have been the average salary of a 
curate in the eighteenth century ; the " Vicar of "Wakefield" received 
thirty-five pounds with certain perquisites. This description of the 
village preacher was written shortly after the poet learned of the 
death of his brother Henry. Read the introductory lines of The 
Traveller and compare with this passage. See also the comment on 
The Deserted Village in Irving's Life of Goldsmith. The use of pass- 
ing in this line is Shakespearian. See Othello., Act. I. sc. iii. 1. 160, 
fct" a familiar line. 

182, Steady zeal : in the first edition it was " ready zeal." Can 
you see any reason for the change ? 

196. The village master : the picture that follows is supposed to 
be that of Goldsmith's early master Thomas (familiarly " Paddy ") 
Byrne. In Irving's Life of Goldsmith may he found an interesting 
account of this eccentric pedagogue. 

205-206. In Ireland, Scotland, and the provincial parts of Eng- 
land it is said the sound of '1' is omitted in 'fault.' This may ex- 
plain the imperfect rhyme. Cf. Essay on Criticism, 11. 170, 422. 

209, The terms were sessions of the universities and law courts. 
Tides are the times or sessions, particularly of the ecclesiastical year. 
But we still use noontide, eventide, etc, 

210. To gauge : was to measure the capacity of casks. This was 
one of Burns's duties as excise commissioner. See Standard Dictionary . 

232. The twelve good rules ascribed to King Charles I. are : 
1. Urge no healths. 2. Profane no divine ordinances. 3. Touch no 

K 



130 GOLDSMITH. 

state matters. 4. Reveal no secrets. 5. Pick no quarrels. 6. Make 
no companions. 7. Maintain no ill opinions. 8. Keep- no bad com- 
pany. 9. Encourage no vice. 10. Make no long meal. 11. Repeat 
no grievances. 12. Lay no wagers. The royal game of goose : 
was played by two persons, with dice and a board divided into sixty- 
two squares somewhat like the modern checker-board. On every 
fourth and fifth square a goose was painted, and if the plaj'er's dice 
fell on a goose, he might move on twice as many squares as the num- 
ber thrown. Cf. with this passage Goldsmith's Description of an 
Author''s Bedchamber, the original draft of these lines. It was part 
of a letter written to his brother Henry early in 1759. 

244. 'Woodman : used to mean a hunter. 

248. Bliss: is another of the poet's favorite words. See The 
Traveller, 11. 58, 62, 82, 226, 267, 424. Cf. note on 1. 17. 

250. Cf. Ben Jonson's verses To Celia, and Scott's Marmion, canto 
V. stanza 12. 

287. The use of female for woman, common as late as Scott's 
time and used ad nauseam by Cooper, is now considered a vulgarism. 

288. Secure to please : means confident of pleasing. Cf. with 
this construction that in 1. 145. 

316. Artist : in Goldsmith's time, was applied to any one engaged 
in the mechanic arts. 

322. Chariots : is here used generically for carriages. Torches : 
used before the time of stationary street lights, were borne before car- 
riages by servants called link-boys. 

343 ff. Goldsmith's notion of Georgia was no more hazy than that 
of many an Englishman of a later time. The Altama is better known 
as the Altamaha. 

368. Seats : is of course a classicism, here equivalent to ' homes.' 
Cf. Dryden's Alexander'' s Feast, 1. 26. Note also the expressions, 
"seat of learning," "seat of government," "country seat," etc. 

386. Things like these : "Not referring to anything in the con- 
text, but to the general subject of the poem, the innocence and happi- 
ness of country life." (Quoted by Rolfe.) 

391 ff. Cf. The Traveller, 1. 144. 

398. Here begins an instance of the figure called vision. See Mac- 
beth, Act. II. sc. i. 1. 31 ff. 

402. What distinction seems to be made between shore and 
strand ? 



THE DESERTED VILLAGE. 131 

418. The river Tornea or Torneo forms part of the boundary be- 
tween Sweden and Russia, and flows into the Gulf of Bothnia. Lake 
Tornea is in the nortliern part of Sweden. Pambamarca is a moun- 
tain near Quito. 

427-430. Tlie last four lines of the poem were added by Dr. John- 
son. Goldsmith and Gray, in proportion to the amount written, have 
furnished more familiar quotations than any other English poets. 
Of the Elegy nearly every stanza contains some expression known 
wherever English is spoken. Bartlett's Familiar Quotations includes 
seventy-four lines from The Deserted Village^ and forty-six from The 
Traveller^ besides numerous selections from Goldsmith's other poems. 



ENGLISH. 1 

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THIS book is the outgrowth of experience in teaching compo- 
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ENGLISH. 



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Goldsmith, The Vicar of Wakefield. Edited by R. Adelaide 

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Lowell. The Vision of Sir Launfal. Edited by Dr. F. R. 

Lane. {In preparation^^ 
MacaULAY'S Essays. Edited by Samuel Thurber. 

Addison. Boards only, 20 cents. 

Chatham. Boards only, 20 cents. 

Clive. Boards only, 20 cents. 

Milton. Boards only, 20 cents. 

Milton and Addison (one vol.). Cloth only, 35 cts. 

Johnson. Boards only, 20 cents. 

Warren Hastings. Boards only, 20 cents. 



ENGLISH. 3 

The Academy Series of English Classics. 

Continued. 

Milton. Paradise Lost. Books I. and. 1 1. Edited by Henry 

W. Boynton. Boards, 20 cents ; cloth, 30 cents. 
The Minor Poems. Edited by Samuel Thurber. 
(/« prepar'ation.^ 
Pope, Gray, and Goldsmith. Select Poems : An Essay on Criticism, 
Elegy, Progress of Poesy, The Traveller, and The 
Deserted Village. Edited by Geo. A. Watrous. 
{At Press.) 
Shakespeare. Edited by Samuel Thurber. 

Julius Caesar. Boards, 20 cents; cloth, 30 cents. 
Macbeth. Boards, 20 cents ; cloth, 30 cents. 
Merchant of Venice. Boards, 20 cts. ; cloth, 30 cts. 
As You Like It. Boards, 20 cents ; cloth, 30 cents. 
Hamlet. Boards, 25 cents; cloth, 35 cents. 
Syle, L. D. (editor). Four English Poems: Rape of the Lock, John 
Gilpin's Ride, The Prisoner of Chiilon, and 
Rugby Chapel. Boards, 20 cents. 
Tennyson. Selections. Edited by Mary L. Avery. {In prepa- 

ration) 
Three Narrative Poems. The Ancient Mariner, Sohrab and Rustum, 
and Enoch Arden. Edited by Geo. A. Watrous. 
Cloth only, 30 cents. 
Webster. Reply to Hayne. Edited by Professor C. B. Brad- 

ley. Boards only, 20 cents. 

William Hand Browne, Johns Hopkins University : The text [of Burke's 
Speech on Conciliation] is beautifully printed, and the notes, appar- 
ently, all that can be desired. 

Felix E. Schelling, University of Pennsylvafiia : The book [Selections 
from Emerson] seems to me thoroughly well done, as to selection, text, 
and editing. The suggestive introduction, and the pertinency and brevity 
of the notes, seem to offer an example in the doing of this sort of work. 

The Critic, Sept. 9, 1896 : The books of this series are well printed, and 
seem to be in all respects the best of the very cheap editions of standard 
literature. 

Professor J. W. Stearns, University of Wisconsin : They [Conciliation 
and Julius Caesar] are very attractive books, handy, handsome, sub- 
stantial, and well edited withal. It is very gratifying to see books in 
every way so satisfactory and so cheap, issued for use in our schools. 
The Series deserves to meet with general favor. 



6 ENGLISH. 

Composition-Rhetoric for Use in Secondary 
Schools. 



By Professors F. N. ScoTT, of the University of Michigan, and J. V. 
Denney, of Ohio State University. i2mo, cloth, 414 pages. Price, 

^i.oo. 

IN the preparation of this work the authors have been guided 
by three considerations. 

First, it is desirable that a closer union than has hitherto 
prevailed be brought about between secondary composition and 
secondary rhetoric. The rhetoric which is found in this book is 
meant to be the theory of the pupil's practice. 

Second, it is desirable in secondary composition that greater 
use be made of the paragraph than has hitherto been done. In 
this book the paragraph is made the basis of a systematic method 
of instruction. 

A third idea which underlies the work is the idea of growth. 
A composition is regarded not as a dead form, to be analyzed 
into its component parts, but as a living product of an active, 
creative mind. 

In working out these ideas, care has been taken to provide 
illustrative material of a kind that should be thought-provoking, 
interesting, and valuable in itself, but not too far above the 
standard of literary practice. 

Professor Sophie C. Hart, Wellesley College^ Wellesley, Mass. : As a whole 
I consider it the best book on English Composition for the preparatory 
school, and shall recommend it to all teachers who send students to 
Wellesley. 

Charles L. Hanson, Mechanic Arts High School, Boston, Mass. : I like the 
book. Unlike many books, it does not appear unattractive. Unlike 
others, it seems adapted to pupils of high school age. It ought to prove 
inspiring. It must be suggestive both to pupil and to teacher. 

Miss Harriet L. Mason, Drexel Institute, Philadelphia, Pa. : I find it all 
that I could wish. The book fills a unique place in English text-books, 
and is in the very van of the best teaching of composition. I shall use it 
during the coming year. 

Professor Robert Herrick, Univefsity of Chicago : It is really a long stride 
in the right direction. It throws overboard much useless rubbish con- 
tained in the secondary school rhetoric, and teaches explicitly how to 
get material, how to arrange it, and how to present it. 



ENGLISH. 



Paragraph-Writing. 



By Professor F. N. ScoTT, University of Michigan, and Professor J. 
V. Denney, Ohio State University. i2mo, 304 pages. Price, ^i.oo. 

THE principles embodied in this work were developed and 
put in practice by its authors at the University of Michigan 
several years ago. Its aim is to make the paragraph the basis of 
a method of composition, and to present all the important facts 
of rhetoric in their application to it. 

In Part I. the nature and laws of the paragraph are presented ; 
the structure and function of the isolated paragraph are discussed, 
and considerable space is devoted to related paragraphs ; that is, 
those which are combined into essays. 

Part II. is a chapter on the theory of the paragraph intended 
for teachers and advanced students. 

Part III. contains copious material for class work, selected 
paragraphs, suggestions to teachers, lists of subjects for composi- 
tions (about two thousand), and helpful references of many kinds. 

The Revised Edition contains a chapter on the Rhetoric of 
the Paragraph, in which will be found applications of the para- 
graph-idea to the sentence, and to the constituent parts of the 
sentence, so far as these demand especial notice. The nenv mate- 
rial thus provided supplies, in the form of principles and illustra- 
tions, as much additional theory as the student of Elementary 
Rhetoric needs to master and apply, in order to improve the 
details of his paragraphs in unity, clearness, and force. 

Professor J. M. Hart, Cornell University : The style of the writers is admi- 
rable for clearness and correctness. . . . They have produced an uncom- 
monly sensible text-book. . . . For college work it will be hard to beat. 
I know of no other book at all comparable to it for freshman drill. 

Professor Charles Mills Gayley, University of California : Paragraph- 
Writing is the best thing of its kind, — the only systematic and exhaustive 
effort to present a cardinal feature of rhetorical training to the educational 
world. 

The Dial, Afarch, 1894 : Paragraph-Writing is one of the really practical 
books on English composition. ... A book that successfully illustrates 
the three articles of the rhetorician's creed, — theory, example, and practice. 



8 ENGLISH. 

From Milton to Tennyson. 

Masterpieces of English Poetry. Edited by L. Du PONT Syle, Uni- 
versity of California. i2mo, cloth, 480 pages. Price, ^i.oo. 

IN this work the editor has endeavored to bring together within 
the compass of a moderate-sized vokime as much narrative, 
descriptive, and lyric verse as a student may reasonably be re- 
quired to read critically for entrance to college. From the 
nineteen poets represented, only such masterpieces have been 
selected as are within the range of the understanding and the 
sympathy of the high school student. Each masterpiece is 
given complete, except for pedagogical reasons in the cases of 
Thomson, Cowper^ Byron, and Browning. Exigencies of space 
have compelled the editor reluctantly to omit Scott from this 
volume. The copyright laws, of course, exclude American poets 
from the scope of this work. 

The following poets are represented : — 

MILTON, by the L' Allegro, II Penseroso, Lycidas, and a Selection from the Sonnets. 

DRYDEN . . Epistle to Congreve, Alexander's Feast, Character of a Good Parson. 

POPE .... Epistles to Mr. Jervas, to Lord Burlington, and to Augustus. 

THOMSON . . Winter. 

JOHNSON . . Vanity of Human Wishes. 

GRAY .... Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard, and The Bard. 

GOLDSMITH . Deserted Village. 

COWPER . . Winter Morning's Walk. 

BURNS . . . Cotter's Saturday Night, Tarn O'Shanter, and a Selection from the 

Songs. 
COLERIDGE . Ancient Mariner. 
BYRON . . . Isles of Greece, and Selections from Childe Harold, Manfred, and 

the Hebrew Melodies. 
KEATS . . . Eve of St. Agnes, Ode to a Nightingale, Sonnet on Chapman's 

Homer. 
SHELLEY . . Euganean Hills, The Cloud, The Skylark, and the Two Sonnets 

on the Nile. 
WORDSWORTH Laodamia, The Highland Girl, Tintern Abbey, The Cuckoo, The 

Ode to a Skylark, The Milton Sonnet, The Ode to Duty, and 

the Ode on the Intimations of Immortality. 
MACAULAY . Horatius. 
CLOUGH . . . Two Ships, the Prologue to the Mari Magno, and the Lawyer's 

First Tale. 
ARNOLD . . The Scholar-Gypsy and the Forsaken Merman. 
BROWNING . Transcript from Euripides (Balanstion's Adventure). 
TENNYSON . CEnone, Morte D'Arthur, The Miller's Daughter, and a Selection 

from the Songs. 



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